Lately, we’ve been focusing quite a bit on e-commerce and startups in Vietnam’s mobile market, especially smartphones, but we have yet to take a close look at the tablet market in Vietnam. And for good reason, the tablet market is nowhere near as aggressive as smartphones but some of the latest growth indicators reveal that it’s faster than you think. Research firm IDC revealed that last year, tablet growth hit 110 percent. This is in contrast to smartphone growth, which actually dropped four percent last year.

Currently, Apple still sits on top of the market. Research from the second quarter of last year revealed that the iPad still leads with sales rising 170 percent. At last count, Apple holds 78 percent of the tablet market.

There’s no surprise there, thus far, Android has yet to deliver a full size tablet that contests the iPad. Vietnam, which is hyper brand conscious, of course follows Apple. Android on one side, is seen as a hacker’s phone, but on the other side, is also seen as a poor man’s operating system. With Apple’s prices, it’s no wonder. But that hasn’t stopped a new market from appearing: low-end tablets.

Earlier this year, FPT, by Vietnam’s biggest tech giant, said that it plans to ship 600,000 own-branded Android phones, priced at around $200, this year and this is only the beginning. For those not in the know, FPT numbers over 10,000 engineers and has its hand in everything from telecom, outsourcing, software development, ICT education, and manufacturing. The BiPad produced by PI Vietnam, priced at around VND 2 million ($100) is one of the first of many steps in the direction of

But let’s all calm down, although some of these numbers do appear favorable, in 2011, only 120,000 tablets were thought to be sold in Vietnam. Thus, if the growth rates are correct, Vietnam has still not broken one million tablets sold per year. That’s in stark contrast to millions of smartphones sold every year. I think this is not an isolated example in Vietnam, across Southeast Asia, tablets are lagging, because consumers needs to catch up with smartphones first before they start considering tablets.

Inside Foxconn’s factory. (Image credit: qz.com)

After some delays, it looks like Taiwanese company Hon Hai – commonly known as Foxconn – is set to build a plant in Indonesia. According to Reuters, Foxconn is looking to seal the deal with the Indonesian government next month. It was also reported that Foxcon “has no plan to export phones from Indonesia and will not make Apple products there.” Rather, it is the Indonesian domestic market that Foxconn is interested in, which a spokesperson claims is a $2.4 billion market for phones.

There’s no news on where the plant will be, but the government is willing to provide tax incentives if it were to be built outside of Java island, presumably to take jobs to less developed regions. With Foxconn coming into the country, it could create one million jobs in the nation, which certainly could be good news.

For folks who are interested to take a look at what’s inside an average Foxconn factory, check out this video.

(Source: Reuters)

“We had our best quarter ever in China,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier today. In its post-earnings conference call for Q2 of fiscal 2013, Cook revealed that Apple sales to Chinese consumers (in the Greater China area, not just the mainland) amounted to $8.8 billion in that period of time, which was up 11 percent year-on-year. In response to a question from a call participant, he denied that Apple had hit a wall in China with the iPhone and iPad. The company also revealed that it plans to double its count of official Apple Stores in Greater China (currently 11).

The Greater China stats cover Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao, and mainland China. Looking only at the mainland, sales were up eight percent. That’s not so hot when compared to slow growth in the US at a rate of seven percent.

Earlier data from IDC has made clear that 73.2 percent of all mobiles sold in China are smartphones, but the on-the-ground market is far from saturated.

56 percent of Apple’s revenue now comes from non-US markets – representing $24.3 billion in sales. Apple’s total revenues for Q2 hit $43.6 billion, beating analysts’ estimates. But profit nonetheless slipped 18 percent.

Cook inevitably dodged insinuations, notes TechCrunch, about building a budget iPhone, and instead stressed that Apple is selling the older iPhone 4 and 4S in markets like China as a more affordable option for lower-income folks who are trashing their feature phones.

The positive numbers from China come as a relief for Apple after a rough month of public attacks by state media, accusing the company of treating Chinese consumers unfairly when it comes to customer service and repairing devices. Also remember that Android is China’s top smartphone OS, with an estimated 160 million active Android owners right now.

(Source: TechCrunch)

Although obviously the number of phones Apple has returned to Foxconn is not zero (no manufacturer is perfect, after all), and Xing declined to share more precise numbers, he did say that it would be impossible for a factory to have such a high failure rate, and that there were quality control measures in place to prevent that sort of thing from happening.

Apple has still not responded to our request for comment, and is unlikely to do so, but if it does we will update both this and our original post with the company’s response.

(China Business News via Sina Tech)

Because Foxconn reportedly makes only between 1.5 and 2 billion RMB in yearly profit for the iPhones it produces, the company could be looking at around a sixty percent drop in profits this year.

That sounds grim, but it’s worth keeping in mind that as of yet, none of these numbers are official. It’s possible that the 200 RMB per phone estimate is far too high, although it’s also quite possible the phones will cost more than that to fix. It’s also possible that none of this is even true; while it has been widely reported in the Chinese tech press, the Chinese tech press has been known to make stuff up, and neither Apple or Foxconn have confirmed this story. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment and will update this story when the company responds (which we expect to be never).

A powerful earthquake struck the city of Ya’an in Sichuan province over the weekend, not too far from the site of the larger and even more catastrophic quake in 2008. Now, with rescue teams already on site, it’s time for donations to flood in to help sustain survivors and rebuild the area. Tech companies are keen to be philanthropic too. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has pledged RMB 50 million (US$8 million) this morning for the Chinese victims; and rival gadget-maker Samsung (005930:KS) had earlier vowed to donate RMB 60 million ($9.63 million).

Apple pledged its quake relief funds via public relations channels, while Samsung rather more effectively posted its offering on the Samsung China official Sina Weibo page. The Weibo post came with a statement from Samsung China president Zhang Yuanji who said, “Samsung China is always with the Chinese people through thick and thin, to tide over the difficulties.” Plus, local media reports that Samsung has set up ad-hoc free phone repair centers in the affected quake zone.

Apple has a memorial image for the quake victims on its homepage right now (pictured above). According to Sina Tech, the Cupertino company released a statement that also pledged new gadgets for quake-hit schools:

At this difficult time, our hearts are with the victims of the Sichuan earthquake. Aside from the cash donation to help the affected people to tide over their difficulties, we are committed to providing new Apple devices to schools in the disaster area, and Apple employees in the locality are on stand-by at any time to help.

With Apple under pressure in China in the past couple of months – state-run media last week claimed that 60 percent of Chinese consumers now think less of Apple than they did previously – the company will be privately hoping to make no mis-steps with this pledge.

China has about 85 million active iOS users, and 160 million on Android. Since Samsung is the preferred brand of Chinese Android buyers, the Korean company and Apple are quite closely matched in terms of smartphone sales in the country. Samsung sold 30 million smartphones in China alone in 2012. The great rivalry between the two – in stores as well as courtrooms – will inevitably lead to comparisons of the amount donated by each. But, hey, they made sizable charitable donations, and there are biggers issues in Sichuan right now – such as the nearly 200 dead and the very many still missing.

(Sources: Sina Tech (1) and (2); Hat-tip to reader @Geoffrey_Wu for tipping us)

Singapore-made food app Burpple was featured on the front page across 14 countries in Apple’s App Store in recent weeks. The 14 countries include Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Sri Lanka. We asked but the folks at Burrple didn’t even know how they got featured. But I think we all can agree that the Burpple app is beautifully crafted. So it didn’t come as much of a surprise that the App Store editors would like it. If you haven’t played with Burpple yet, you better download it here now.

This isn’t the first time Burrple got featured on the app store though. Co-founder Elisha Ong says that Burpple was featured last year on an iTunes mini-banner in the US and Europe. Though this is the first time the app was actually featured on the App Store homepage. Since the beginning of this year, Burpple has added more than 25,000 new users. The startup declined to reveal its total number of users.

Of course, downloads don’t equate to money since the app is free to use. Burrple is currently exploring how it could generate revenue first by communicating with restauranteurs. Elisha told us:

We are working closely with restaurants and merchants to develop products and services that adds real value and benefit to them. Burpple Pages is one such offering that helps them grow their online and mobile presence, giving potential customers just what they’d need to know and decide where to dine.

Just yesterday, Burpple also made a move into the web, launching a Yelp-like food search site which I think could potentially turn into a restaurant reservation service. Elisha added that Burpple is looking to “change the landscape of restauranteurs, hawkers, and business owners” but didn’t elaborate exactly how. So keep waiting and burpping, folks.

We’ve compiled some of the paper’s survey results into the charts below, but it’s probably worth mentioning how this survey was conducted. According to the paper, the People’s Daily Strong Nation web forum in collaboration with the China Mainland Marketing Research Co. surveyed 2,824 “ordinary people” across 28 Chinese cities using a phone system. With that said, some of the questions seem to have been a bit leading. For example, it appears that respondents were not even given the option of saying that their opinion of Apple had increased when responding to the first question.

(Apologies for the small, non-interactive charts; Google Spreadsheets was not being cooperative this morning).

The survey also found that long repairs and high repair prices were among Chinese consumers’ chief complaints about Apple’s after-sales service.

(People’s Daily via Sinocism List)

Tim Cook’s got more explaining to do. Just a couple of weeks after Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) apology to Chinese consumers that followed a media attack on the company’s product returns policy in China, the gadget-maker is under assault again. This time, state-owned People’s Daily has named Apple’s App Store, used by iPhone and iPad owners to get apps and games, among seven online porn offenders in the country.

Pornography is illegal in China, and online sites found to contain sexual material are frequently shut down or blocked. The article specifically says that “these illegal sites should be shut down”. While’s the People’s Daily list likely refers to saucy iOS apps created by third-party developers, Apple will be deemed responsible as the operator of that digital publishing platform.

But since Apple also bans nudity from its App Store, it’s hard to see what there is to object to. Yes, there are apps filled with images of sexy girls, but they’re all fully-clothed – as in the screenshot above. There’s definitely not anything that could be considered “porn” in Apple’s iOS store. And if we’re talking about exploiting photos of scantily-clad ladies for commercial gain, that’s an area Chinese state media is expert at, with puff pieces on state news agency Xinhua like “Top 10 sexy female stars in U.S.” and “Top 10 sexy goddess of Asian descent”. Basically, those are just as racy as anything found in Apple’s App Store. That’s one reason (of many) that Xinhua is a joke among expats in China, often dubbed “Skinhua” for its penchant for sultry slideshows. The People’s Daily does it too, such as with the recent, facepalm-inducing “Beautiful female journalists at Two Sessions”.

While the risk of Apple’s iTunes store being blocked in China is low, it puts more pressure on Apple. Perhaps the Cupertino company can take heart from the People’s Daily piece not emphasizing Apple that much – it’s not even mentioned in the headline or first paragraph. Plus, a possible solution could come from simply forsaking any slightly racy app from its App Store line-up.

Also on the porn blacklist is a third-party Android app store called G-Fans. Surprisingly, no other startup running an Android app store made the list – and the Google Play store, which is far more loosely vetted than Apple’s marketplace, has gone unnoticed. The other named sites are obscure ones.

(Sources: People’s Daily, via WSJ)

KuaiYong has just launched this web store for pirated iOS apps.

Far from being shut down by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), the Chinese team behind KuaiYong seems to be thriving. Last year it made a no-jailbreak-needed alternative to iTunes that not only pirates iOS apps, but also helps sync them to your iPhone or iPad. This week, the same team has launched a web version of its pirate iOS app store at 7659.com.

The 7659 “store” is full of pirated iOS apps and games available for free. While the content is nothing new – it was previously embedded in the Kuaiyong PC app – it makes the renegade startup more accessible to potential new users who can browse the available apps in their web browser. If you choose to download one of the iOS apps or games from the 7659 site, it actually downloads the Kuaiyong PC app if you don’t have it already.

Interestingly, the 7659.com site uses geolocation detection to hide itself from those outside of China. So, only readers within China will see the store as pictured in my screenshots. For those outside of the nation, you’ll either see an error message or it’ll just redirect to the KuaiYong homepage.

Aside from this new web store, KuaiYong is planning to launch its piracy-pimped iTunes alternative app internationally, but the English version of that is still not ready.

After the demise of the iOS jailbreak app Installous, which enabled an iPhone or iPad to use pirated apps, many will be looking for Installous alternatives – and KuaiYong is clearly hoping to fill that niche, with the added benefit of not requiring a jailbreak. And there’s clearly nothing Apple can do about it.

A game page on the new pirate store. Click to enlarge.

Great news for Apple lovers in the Philippines: today is the day! Finally premium Apple resellers are offering unlocked iPhone 5, iPhone 4, and iPhone 4s — and they’re all official.

This is a great news here in the Philippines. Before today you could buy unlocked iPhones from unauthorized resellers all of which are “grey market” items. This meant that if you found a dent on your phone after opening it, you couldn’t replace it. That’s because part of the risk of buying grey market units is basically waiving your claim to any Apple warranty. And if your choice was to buy an unlocked phone abroad, that also came with its own pains as you cannot claim Apple warranty locally.

So if we wanted to buy an iPhone with a local warranty in the Philippines, we only had two choices: either buy them from Globe or Smart, the local carriers in the country, and both are locked to their respective networks.

The prices of the new unlocked phones, according to Technoodling, are still a bit steep vs. the prices of the gray market imports. However, they’re still quite tolerable if you want peace of mind.

iPhone 5 16 GB = PHP 33,600 (US$ 816)
iPhone 5 32 GB = Php 38,790 (US$ 942)
iPhone 5 64 GB = Php 43,950 (US$ 1,067)
iPhone 4S 16 GB = Php 28,425 (US$ 690)
iPhone 4 8 GB = Php 19,415 (US$ 472)

Source: Technoodling.net

The scam saw a Wenzhou Apple shop owner turning in what he claimed were 121 iPhone 4S BAND parts (the core of the phone, worth about $476 each) that were broken and asking that they be replaced back in December of 2012. Apple complied, but in January discovered that the parts he submitted as broken were actually counterfeits. They reported this to the shop, which claimed innocence and reported the case to the police.

It took the police several months, but on April 1 they finally arrested one of the shop’s engineers and her boyfriend, who in turn implicated a number of other employees in the scam, all of whom have since also been arrested. Bit in addition to raising questions about Apple’s after-sales service in China and whether it might be too lenient when it comes to returns, it also raises the question of how many of the iPhones out there are real, if scammers can make fake parts so real that it takes even Apple itself a month to notice the difference.

The safest remedy should just be to buy any Apple products you might need new from on of China’s official Apple stores. Sure, the smaller shops in electronics malls sometimes have Apple goods for cheaper, but you know what they say about deals that seem too good to be true…

(Dushi Kuaibao via TechWeb)

Credit: Kompas.com

About two days ago, someone spotted an under construction store at Indonesia’s Pasaraya Blok M – a shopping center in Jakarta – with a sign that says “Apple Store Open: 16 Juni 2013” complete with Apple’s logo on it (pictured above). We’ve known for quite a while that Apple is indeed going to open an office and perhaps a store too, so will this be the company’s first official Apple Store in the country? Most probably not.

Aulia Masna, chief editor of DailySocial and former editor in chief of Macworld Indonesia argues (as quoted by Kompas) that there are a lot of details that the upcoming store misses. First is that the announcement uses Arial font, which is not the kind of font Apple usually use for its ads. According to AppleGazette, Apple uses Myriad Pro Semibold font.

The second obvious fact is that the store mixes both Indonesian and English language in its announcement. The month of “Juni” is in Indonesian, and Apple wouldn’t do that.

Third mistake is that the sign gives away too much information. IfoAppleStore explains that Apple only acknowledges the location of an upcoming store about seven to 10 days prior to the grand opening – and that’s usually accompanied by an announcement on the retail section of Apple’s site. This store is months away from completion.

Fourth, an Apple official store should have a minimum of 2,000 square meters of space, and the one at Pasaraya is much smaller than that, having around 100 meter squares. Furthermore, Apple wouldn’t open its first official store at a place like Blok M. I don’t have anything against the place, it’s just that you won’t find wealthier Indonesians at that mall. A better spot for an official Apple Store would be Pacific Place mall which has a Lamborghini store on the ground floor.

THIS is what a real Apple store banner looks like, from a new Hong Kong store last year. Image by Casey Lau.

The last mistake, which comes to be the most obvious one too, is the fact that the upcoming Indonesian Apple Store is using a cheap banner. No way does it look like the kind of banners that Apple uses for its upcoming official store announcements (pictured above).

So this looks like an authorized (or unauthorized) reseller of Apple gear, and they are trying to get as much attention from this stunt as possible. And it worked.

As in many other developing countries, there are a lot of intellectual property infringements happening in Indonesia. Should Apple do something about this over-zealous usage of Apple’s logo, Aulia believes the reseller will be issued with a cease and desist order, and will need to have the sign replaced.

Whatever happens, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Credit: Kompas.com

Credit: Kompas.com

(Source: Kompas)

When Google left China’s search market back in 2010, it seemed like an end to the company’s attempts to seriously engage with the China market. Yet somehow, just a few years later, Chinese people are buying phones in droves that run on Google’s Android platform. 86 percent of the new smartphones sold in China run Android. Most of China’s so-called “home grown” mobile operating systems are just Android ROMs. Even China’s MIIT feels that Android’s dominance poses a potential threat. Heck, even Google’s biggest domestic competitor Baidu has launched a mobile OS that runs on Google’s Android platform. Yet for some reason, China’s state-run media organs seem to be fixated on Apple.

The anti-Apple parade began a few weeks ago with CCTV’s annual World Consumer Rights Day show, in which it accused Apple of treating Chinese customers unfairly because of allegedly discriminatory return policies. Since then, the echoes of anti-Apple sentiment have only grown, in part because some people have hitched their wagons to that train in hopes of getting some free hype.

Yet for all the talk about “China’s war on Apple,” I think Google is the real concern. As my colleague Steven pointed out on Friday, Android’s market dominance in China means that Google essentially controls a huge chunk of China’s mobile industry; thousands of app developers and indeed entire app marketplaces revolve around the Android platform, so much so that even the Chinese developers who want to create unique mobile OSes are essentially forced to make them Android forks to ensure that users will even give them the time of day. Think about it this way: how many Xiaomi users would still be using MIUI if Android apps didn’t run on the platform?

I should state that personally, I don’t think Google really poses a threat to China, although its dominance of the mobile market certainly does take some opportunities away from Chinese companies. But if Chinese authorities are worried about the influence foreign tech companies have over the domestic market — and I imagine they are — it is surprising that there hasn’t been a stronger push towards a real home-grown mobile OS that can compete both domestically and abroad. That’s doubly true given that China’s government already knows Google is opposed to the country’s censorship polices. Google could, for example, release a new version of Android that made it easy for users to circumvent the Great Firewall. It hasn’t, of course, but if it did, the vast majority of China’s smartphone owners already own phones that could run it easily.

Personally, I think it would be great if that happened, but my guess is that China’s government doesn’t. So where is the push-back against Google, and the calls for a real home-grown mobile OS? I’m not sure.

Last week Steven argued that Firefox OS is China’s best hope at a homegrown mobile platform, so perhaps the government is waiting to see how that pans out. But I can’t help but wonder if Ji Yongqing wasn’t right when he argued that the problem lies much deeper and that China will not be able to create its own mobile OS under the current conditions. If that’s true, then China and its mobile marketplace are a little bit at the mercy of Google. It’s strange that we keep seeing headlines about how evil Apple is when in theory, Google could pose far bigger problems.

Disclaimer: I’m not trying to defend Apple here; it probably deserves the stick its getting and even if it doesn’t, I’m mad at the company anyway because yet another of its crap-quality power cords has broken on me. And, as I said earlier, I think if anything Google is likely to use its influence over China’s market for good, not evil, so I don’t think China actually has much to worry about. But since Chinese government authorities (like government authorities everywhere) seem inclined to worry about this sort of thing anyway, I thought it was worth pointing out that for all the bluster about Apple in the press, Google is the real 800 pound gorilla in the room (figuratively speaking).

The news has gotten a lot of attention in the Chinese press, mostly because Luo is a well-known figure (he’s the founder of Bullogger and also a well-known English teacher and author), but has also attracted attention from the English-language press (like Atlantic partners Tea Leaf Nation) because it seems to have echoes of China’s state media attacks on Apple.

In actuality, though, as an Android ROM, Smartisan OS is not particularly unique. Many Chinese companies have released their own Android ROMs (the best of them is probably Xiaomi’s MIUI). Nor does it really resolve any of China’s concerns about its reliance on foreign operating systems, because as an Android ROM, Smartisan is still Google software at its core. (Related: Why China can’t make its own mobile OS.) For all the bluster about Apple in the state press, Google and Android is what the Chinese government is really worried about when it comes to the world of mobile. After all, Apple users make up just 12 percent of China’s smartphone market. Android users, in contrast, account for 86 percent of it.

So why is Smartisan CEO Luo talking about Apple? One word: hype. Like it or hate it, just speaking the company’s name gets attention. And in fact, Luo is just following in the footsteps of Xiaomi, China’s most successful Android-based OS developer. As you may recall, in the days leading up to Xiaomi’s first handset launch, Apple’s name came up repeatedly. First, Lei Jun talked about how everyone was waiting for Apple founder Steve Jobs to die and then after Jobs actually died, the official Xiaomi weibo account tweeted a tasteless joke about him. The company later denied that Lei had actually made the aforementioned comment about Steve Jobs and the employee responsible for making the inappropriate joke on weibo was disciplined, but the incidents got Xiaomi a fair amount of attention, and there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Luo’s approach with Smartisan seems, in a lot of ways, to be inspired by Xiaomi. But can it capture the attention of the Chinese smartphone-buying public? The launch event got a lot of attention, but it seems like very little of it was positive. In a front-page poll conducted by Sina Tech with more than 11,000 respondents as of this writing, for example, users overwhelmingly responded to the Smartisan reveal with apathy or total disinterest. For example, one of the OS’s main selling points is meant to be that it’s uniquely designed to fit Chinese users’ lives and habits, but when asked what they thought of the OS after the event, here’s how Sina Tech’s readers voted:

(Note that Sina Tech’s poll is ongoing and as such these results may change over time as more readers respond.)

When asked if they’d give the OS a shot, most users were similarly dismissive or hesitant:

And even fewer people were interested in Smartisan’s announced hardware:

Which just goes to show that all the hype in the world is no replacement for a solid product. Whether Smartisan OS is solid or not remains to be seen — it will be released in beta this June — but from what we’ve seen so far, it seems many observers have come away unimpressed. I must say I count myself among them, as while I’m generally a favor of clean, stripped-down aesthetics, I think Smartisan has taken things a bit too far. I may not be the mobile OS’s target demo, but I’m guessing Sina Tech’s readers are, and it looks like they’re not ready to bite this hook yet, either.

Update: This post was updated on Sunday to correct a translation error in the first chart; “Seems like a copycat” was changed to “Too easy to copy.”

Earlier today we looked at how many active Android and iOS users there are in China. In the same report where we found those stats there’s also some insightful data about the jailbreaking of Apple iPhone and iPad devices by Chinese buyers. The good news for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is that jailbreaking – which is often, but not always, done to enable app piracy – is on the decline in the long-run.

The Umeng report explains the downturn in jailbreaking here:

5th February 2013, the iOS 6.1 jailbreak solution was announced. Before this, the percentage of jailbroken handsets in China had already dropped to 27.3 percent but it increased by five percent again to reach 32.3 percent on 16th February 2013. This rate was still 10 percent lower than that in September 2012.

So, the previous report had seen 42.4 percent of iOS devices in China jailbroken, but not even the new iOS 6.1 jailbreak could prevent the overall decline in usage over the course of the past year. But that doesn’t mean that Chinese Apple fans are renouncing piracy. The controversial and popular KuaiYong is an iTunes replacement that enables iOS app piracy without needing a jailbreak, so not all of the country’s growing ranks of Apple fans – now up to 85 million active on iOS in China – are paying up for apps. Little wonder that Chinese iOS developers are only earning an average of 3 cents (yes, US$0.03) per download.

While we’re thinking of iOS, here are the rates of jailbreaking among different versions of iOS in China:

And this shows all versions of iOS being used in China in comparison with overseas iPhone and iPad users. As this shows data from pre-iOS 6.1 jailbreak, it’s little wonder that many were sticking with iOS 5.1 in China:

If you want to see the full ‘China Mobile Internet 2012 Review’ report by Umeng, you can find the 23-page slideshow here.

Newly activated Android devices really started to rocket in numbers last summer, the report notes. Across both platforms, smartphones are now so ingrained in the lives of Chinese mobile users that mobile app sessions rose 16-fold in 2012, with a 12-fold increase in the time spent within the apps that Umeng observed.

As well as lots of interesting demographics and app trends in the infographic, it also points out that iOS jailbreaking is on the decline in the long-run – down from 42.4 percent of Apple iOS gadgets in September 2012 to just 32.3 percent a few weeks ago. Here’s the full graphic:

For more fun graphics like this one, check out previous entries in our infographic series.

In the report, Apple claims that Chinese customers are treated differently than customers in developed countries when getting Apple devices repaired. For example, when replacing an iPhone in England, the report states, customers get an all-new device. But Chinese customers get their old, used back covers (the black or white piece of metal that forms the back part of the phone’s casing) attached to the otherwise-new replacement devices. From the CCTV report:

Isn’t [Apple] here earning Chinese people’s money? Outside China, they will give you a new back cover for free [when they replace your device] but they won’t change Chinese back covers for you. Why are Chinese consumers [treated as] less than others? This is very unfair to Chinese consumers.

Later, the report shows an Apple worker telling a CCTV reporter than back covers are separate, and that getting a new back cover for one’s replaced phone will cost an extra 580 RMB ($92).

CCTV’s complaints weren’t all about back covers either. Among other claims the report also said that Apple’s return and repair policies may violate Chinese regulations in a number of ways. First, retailers are suppose to re-extend the full warranty after a device has been repaired — so that if your phone dies within the 90 day warranty window and you get it repaired, your new 90 day warranty begins the day you pick up the repaired phone — but Apple does not do this. Apple also extends only a one-year warranty for its iPad even though Chinese regulations mandate that many of the product’s components come with two year warranties.

However, the report contains no official statement from Apple. We have contacted Apple China for comment on the matter and will update this post when we hear back.

(CCTV, show transcript via Sina Tech)

Chinese consumers love your gadgets – that’s great news. But the bad news for Apple, Amazon, Google, and many more companies is that Chinese netizens hate your ecosystems. They really don’t want to be trapped in your walled garden. In an age of platforms and extended web services, that’s a huge monetization problem for tech companies entering the world’s biggest market.

Android, without the Google bits

This aversion to tech ecosystems in China is seen most starkly with Google’s mobile OS, Android. An estimated 189 million smartphones were sold in China in 2012, and as many as 86 percent of those were Android devices. But that huge user-base hasn’t translated into popularity for Google’s other apps and services.

Why not? Google has long had a rough ride in China, starting with the Great Firewall blocking YouTube back in 2007 – never to become accessible again. Many more Google services were later turned off by Net Nanny, as some scandal or spread of information made it more convenient for authorities to shut down these channels. Later the GFW blocked Picasa, Blogger, the AppSpot engine. More recently, some apps that are much more central to Android, like G+ and Google Drive, got blocked as well. That certainly hasn’t helped Google’s ecosystem, but I don’t believe it’s the leading cause of Chinese consumers being keen to remove the Google bits from Android.

Love the phones, hate the ecosystem.

Far more crucial to this ecosystem aversion is something indicative of a healthier side of the Chinese web – lots of quality competition. Regardless of the Great Firewall or anything else, Chinese consumers love to pick and choose and mix and match – and get the best deal. We’re talking about consumers who’ll haggle for an hour to save a dollar. And so if there are better apps and services out there, then screw your ecosystem. For cloud storage, Chinese smartphone users could install apps from Baidu, or Shanda, or numerous startups. Over 30 million users have opted for Baidu NetDrive already.

Same for email. Same for web video.

It even applies to sourcing Android apps, with Chinese Android fans choosing to scour a wide range of third-party app stores for games and apps rather than using Google Play.

All that freedom of choice reinforces the general dislike among Chinese netizens of being locked in a walled garden. Using Android generally demands having a Google account and having a Gmail address – but not every user wants to be coralled into this.

Apples are not the only fruit

Apple might have been pushed down to an ignominious sixth place in terms of smartphone sales in China recently – well below Android handset makers like Samsung and Lenovo – but the iPhone and iPad are still examples of an astonishing gadget success in the country. Yet the whole Apple ecosystem hasn’t been so warmly embraced.

iTools is an alternative to iTunes (and helps you jailbreak) if you prefer to opt out of Apple’s ecosystem.

This is despite Apple having built up the most rigid ecosystem (probably an oxymoron, as ecosystems are fluid and adaptive in nature) that mandates having an Apple ID, syncing via iTunes, and not customizing your phone’s UI in any meaningful way. Almost inevitably, a lot of Chinese iOS owners have flipped the bird at all these restrictions and – as is the case on Android – have been greeted with plenty of locally-made resources that can be used as alternatives.

For example, those who dislike iTunes as a domineering music player and App Store combo can instead try out iTools, which is made by a Shenzhen-based startup.

Admitedly, piracy is also an issue, and for some people it’s a motivation in opting out of Apple’s restrictive environment. As we explored recently, there are lots of piracy and jailbreaking resources in China for iPhone and iPad owners.

But ultimately, as with Android, the Apple ecosystem aversion is mostly down to Chinese consumers being keen on using things from local competitors, even if – in avoiding iTunes, iCloud, etc – it makes their experience more fragmented and involves signing up for a bunch of different apps.

Who cares about the Kindle?

All of this bodes very badly for Amazon. Just because Amazon is a huge name and runs China’s fifth-largest e-commerce site, it doesn’t mean that Chinese netizens want to jump aboard its broader hardware and web platform. In fact, all available evidence suggests a strategic nightmare ahead.

Amazon has launched its Kindle e-bookstore and apps in China but it has not yet launched other cloud services or any hardware here. Since Amazon makes some of the most locked-down hardware, and its Kindle Fire tablet is a parallel-universe version of Android, it sounds like a potential disaster as a raw example of a product that’s totally unsuited to the Chinese market. Yes, China loves Android, but only in its own image. The Amazon AppStore sounds like a no-go here as well.

The hardware, too, will be coming into a market dominated by well-established local rivals who already have e-bookstores linked to their e-readers, such as with Shanda’s Bambook or Dangdang’s Doucon.

Be water, my friend

Be formless, shapeless, like water. (And be flexible towards your ecosystem users).

Yes, it’s a tough market. But openness seems to be massively important – both to Chinese consumers, and to a company’s chance of success in this market. While the Android situation might sound bad, it’s still great for Google. The search giant can still say to developers: “Hey, come develop for Android, because Chinese smartphone buyers love it. Yes, there’s piracy and they refuse to use Google Play, but you can still monetize from ads – yes, our own ad platform – and you still get access to the world’s biggest smartphone market.” I believe it’s only a flexible and adaptive ecosystem – like Android – that can perform such a feat. Plus, Android is responsive on hardware price-points, and adaptable and customizable at a software level.

It’s rougher for Apple in China, where the company’s you’re either with us or against us approach to their users often forces many to jailbreak, where they’re then more likely to become app pirates. From that point onward, Apple has no more means of monetizing those users on its platform.

It’s also a cautionary tale for Microsoft in China as it starts afresh with Windows Phone. As established as Microsoft is in China, it’s still in no position to enforce Hotmail/Outlook as a starting point for WP users, and its Marketplace for apps risks being as restrictive as Apple’s.

Of course, local web companies are not immune to all this. China’s biggest e-commerce company, Alibaba, has been met with a frosty reception with its attempt at a mobile OS of its own – and that’s despite having hundreds of millions of local users on its online stores. The nation’s top search engine, Baidu, is also finding it tough to persuade its search users to try out its apps ecosystem – like Baidu Maps, which lags behind local mapping experts Autonavi in terms of users – in the face of strong competition in every single sector. That leaves China’s numerous web giants scrapping over users for every single app and service – it’s unrelentingly rough, but it’s the only way.

So my advice on pushing your tech ecosystem in China is, essentially, to listen to Bruce Lee: Be water, my friend.

(Lead image credit: Our photoshop contains this sketch from DeviantArt)

Specifically, Kantar says Apple hit 23.2 percent of China’s smartphone market in January, up from 18.6 percent in September 2012. But Android saw even more impressive growth, jumping from 65.2 percent of the market in September to 71.5 percent of it in January. The big losers, unsurprisingly, were everyone else. Symbian and Windows Phone both dropped (to 3.5 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively) and other OSes didn’t even register. Here’s a chart of what the market looks like now, according to Kantar:

And here’s a chart that compares the size of each company’s market share in China between September 2012 and January 2013:

Kantar’s report also says that smartphone penetration in China has reached 22 percent, so there is still an awful lot of room for position-shifting as the other four-fifths of the country begin the shift to smartphones.

(via Sina Tech, image source)

RiTeng was also found to be responsible for noise pollution and other environmental infractions, and as a result environmental authorities have shut down some aspects of its production in addition to fining the company.

Readers with a sharp memory may recall the name RiTeng from back in 2011, when an explosion at the company injured 57 workers during a trial production run of Apple’s iPad 2. It’s clear that a few years later, RiTeng hasn’t quite worked out the kinks, and the promise on its website to provide “world-class green [environmentally friendly] products” hasn’t exactly been fulfilled yet.

It’s not clear whether the partial shutdown will affect production of any of the devices RiTeng provides supplies for, but the spill comes at a particularly bad time for the company in terms of PR, as Sina Weibo is currently in the midst of a high-profile clean rivers campaign.

(via Xinhua, image via Engadget)

But privately suspecting something and publicly reporting it are two very different things. On the heels of Apple’s announcement that it had also been hacked, many media outlets strongly implied that China was responsible. Others just came right out and said China was involved right in the headline. The problem with that is that it isn’t true. At all.

In fact, the hacks of Twitter, Facebook, and Apple all seem to have come from Eastern Europe, not China.

As I mentioned previously, it’s not unreasonable that people think about China first when they hear a high-profile hacking story, as the country has been involved in a lot of them. And China’s protestations that it doesn’t actively engage in hacking and other forms of cyberwarfare are patently ridiculous. Of course China is trying to hack other governments and foreign countries. But here’s the thing: everyone is trying to hack everyone all the time. In this day and age, there is simply no way that any country big enough to have its own intelligence agency does not also have government-funded web experts looking to attain valuable intelligence through the web via any number of means, including hacking. China may be involved in more hacking than other countries, but it could also just be less good at getting away with it.

Either way, let’s all try not to jump to the conclusion that it was China the next time you hear a hacking story. Or, if you do jump to a conclusion, at least try not to print it in The Atlantic before it has actually been confirmed.

(image source)

One iWatch mockup

If you follow tech you’ve probably had a hard time not noticing that the world is presently overflowing with rumors that Apple is working on some kind of smart watch that will probably be called the iWatch because why not. The watch reportedly will feature a curved glass screen, and would probably have FaceTime and Siri so that users get to spend the maximum amount of time talking to their wrists while in public.

Following the New York Times piece that kicked off this madness, there has also been quite a lot of blowback and people suggesting that they’re not interested in such a device and would never buy one (I would count myself among them). And many have also pointed out that Apple is just experimenting with a curved-glass watch — the company likely experiments with a lot of products that never see the light of day.

With that said, I know at least one place where the iWatch could potentially make an awful lot of money: China.

I don’t think that China’s hip, tech-savvy youth would be any more interested in an iWatch than techies are in any other country, but the country’s bureaucrats and businessmen would have a field day with it. Remember “Watch Brother”? Watches are the favorite fashion accessory of corrupt officials nationwide, and an Apple watch — if it’s expensive enough — shows off your money and your “hip” tech attitude like nothing else.

As we’ve said before on this site when writing about iPhones, China’s luxury shoppers like tech products that can double as status symbols, which means people need to be able to see them. That’s one reason iDevices sell better than Apple laptops in China; you can’t really take out your MacBook on the subway. An iWatch, then, is the ultimate Apple status symbol: it’s constantly on display for the public to see, unlike a phone which often hides in your pocket. And just imagine the kind of attention you’ll get when you start talking to your wrist — saying very important-sounding things, of course — in public.

I’m being a bit flip, but there is truth to this. Many of China’s luxury buyers like showing off their wealth, and it’s hard to imagine a tech device that would be more publicly visible than a smart watch. Moreover, even Apple releases that Chinese web users claim not to be interested in (like the iPhone 4S) seem to sell extremely well. The idea of an iWatch may be uncreative and a bit ugly, but I have no doubt that such a device would still sell well in China. And since we know China is hugely important to Apple’s future, it isn’t out of the question that Apple really would be considering releasing such a device.

To be clear, I don’t expect to see an iWatch anytime soon. I think what an iWatch might generate in revenue would be offset in what Apple lost in “cool” factor and brand perception. But just for the record, if Apple really is headed in that direction, expect it to do well in the Middle Kingdom.

Just because Chinese consumers love your smartphones, it doesn’t mean they like your mobile ecosystem. In fact, they more than likely hate it. That’s the conclusion that can be drawn from the fact that about 42 percent of Apple iPhones and iPads in China are jailbroken, allowing users to tweak their gadgets in ways that are not sanctioned by Apple – and to install pirated apps. To serve all those iOS jailbreakers, there are plenty of Chinese sites and tools out there, ranging from iTunes alternatives to forums full of cracked iPhone and iPad apps.

Let’s take a look [1] at five popular jailbreaking sites to see what Chinese consumers are looking to get from their renegade iOS devices.

1. KuaiYong

Most controversial of all is KuaiYong, which is some sort of alternative universe iTunes app where all apps are free. Even more worryingly for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), KuaiYong requires no jailbreak to work. The first beta launched back in June 2012, but it’s only in the last month or two that this piracy-oriented app has gained both local and international attention.

But it doesn’t stop there. As we reported a couple of weeks ago, KuaiYong is planning to expand upon its claimed five million Chinese users by launching an English-language version of its Windows app, which is still in development. With the demise of Hackulous and its Installous app for supporting cracked apps on jailbroken iOS devices, KuaiYong could yet prove even more popular.

2. iTools

If you want to jailbreak your iOS device and find a replacement for Apple’s iTunes, then the Shenzhen-made iTools is what you need. Since we looked at iTools’ range of features back in 2011, the app has added an English interface as well as a Mac app.

We often see Chinese web companies offer their iOS apps as direct ‘.ipa’ file downloads – said to be a factor in Qihoo’s ongoing apps ban by Apple – so something like iTools would be useful for Chinese consumers who prefer to avoid the iTunes ecosystem completely.

While iTools itself could help cheapskates to pirate iOS apps, the service itself isn’t geared towards that, and there’s no dodgy app store within it. Instead, the emphasis is on an alternative back-ups tool to iTunes.

iTools has some major partnerships with the likes of Tencent (China’s biggest web company), China Unicom (Apple’s primary mobile partner in the country), and state broadcaster CNTV, who all support publishing standalone ‘.ipa’ app files for iTools users.

3. Duowan

Duowan, now listed on US markets as part of parent company YY (NASDAQ:YY), used to be a veritable pirate’s bay of cracked iOS apps. But the forum-like site has tidied itself up a lot in the past year, and now most of its listings that we checked head straight to the iTunes App Store.

Although the ‘.ipa’ downloads have gone, we’re listing this here because Duowan still has a dedicated jailbreaking section on the site (here) featuring all the jailbreak resources that Chinese iOS fans could need:

4. 51IPA

51IPA, however, is a site that definitely hasn’t cleaned up its act. Packed full of both genuinely free and totally pirated apps, the site does have optional iTunes links, but the emphasis is on the direct downloads, which are usually stashed in third-party cloud storage services. In the sequenced image below, you can snag Doodle Jump HD from the links at the bottom of the page. Note how 51IPA encourages you to make use of the afore-mentioned iTools for managing your pirated apps:

5. Tongbu

Tongbu, which means “sync” in Chinese, is a forum for cracked apps that has spawned its own tool for downloading pirated apps (pictured below) called Sync Assistant. The Tongbu site has dual links for each app: the left one goes to the actual App Store, while the right-hand one (misleadingly labelled “genuine version”) is a magnet link that fires up an ‘.ipa’ download in its Sync Assistant app. Almost inevitably, Tongbu has a jailbreaking resources center too.

Though the rate of jailbreaking in China is said to be going down – from 51 percent in 2011 to 42 percent by the end of last year, it still looks like a big challenge for Apple. But let’s not forget that Chinese and international developers are the ones getting hurt, being robbed of revenue by the jailbreakers who also go on to steal games.

Apple’s rival mobile OS, Google’s Android, is seeing the same ecosystem battle in China, where consumers are loving the highly customizable Android but don’t want to be tied down to a Gmail address and the Google Play store. Instead, most Android users go to third-party Android app stores where piracy is also a big problem. Despite Apple’s much more guarded approach to iOS, and being able to implement convenient local payments for apps, it hasn’t been immune from the ecosystem snub.

(Image credit: Photoshop contains this sketch from DeviantArt)

The research firm Canalys has unveiled new data for Android shipments in Q4 2012. With Android now powering a third of all mobile phones shipped in that quarter, it’s especially notable that Android has helped China’s Huawei, ZTE (HKG:0763; SHE:000063), and Lenovo (HKG:0992) move into the top five among global smartphone makers.

Canalys tracked smartphone shipments in over 50 countries to conclude that the smartphone market grew 37 percent compared to the same time in 2011. Android is on 34 percent of all such phones around the world, with iOS on 11 percent of them.

There are actually four Chinese brands to look out for, as Canalys notes that Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, and Coolpad (though the researchers used the “Yulong” (HKG:2369) parent company name) “all grew by triple-digit percentages.” As we noted recently, figures from Gartner have already told us that Coolpad (and Lenovo, ZTE, and Huawei) is outselling Apple’s iPhone within China. But that’s just within China. So CoolPad is mostly restricted to domestic sales, and is not in the worldwide top five.

Samsung still grew 78 percent globally according to today’s stats. Samsung was China’s top smartphone brand in 2012 as its Galaxy phone series, particularly the large-screen ones like the Note II, sold well. But Lenovo has plans to topple Samsung’s statue in China, with CEO Yang Yuanqing having recently declared that intention.

While Coolpad’s success is almost exclusively within China, its compatriot brands have successful overseas sales as well. Today’s report notes:

Huawei took third place for the first time in Q4 and ZTE fourth. As well as their home markets, they have been relatively successful in the US, where ZTE was fourth and Huawei fifth, driven by their portfolios of low-cost LTE smart phones. Even so, both vendors took less than 5 percent share each there.

Lenovo pushed out Sony to get into the top five. Here are the Q4 2012 global stats:

(Source: Canalys)

Still banned by Apple: the 360 Browser HD for iPad.

At the start of last week, all the 20+ iOS apps made by Chinese software company and search engine Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU) vanished from Apple’s App Store – and they still haven’t been restored. According to multiple sources in one Chinese media report, Qihoo is in big trouble with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) for systematic abuses of its iOS ecosystem. This is not just about manipulating App Store rankings – which Qihoo was allegedly caught doing last year – but also, it is claimed, for encouraging the jailbreaking of iPhones by the way that Qihoo often makes its apps available as single file downloads that can be loaded by users with jailbroken Apple devices.

Qihoo has not commented publicly on the whole matter, and we’ve reached out to its Beijing HQ about these new allegations.

In addition, the QQ Tech source suggests that the removal of Qihoo’s iOS apps was done manually by Apple – not caused by a mere automatically triggered takedown – and therefore amounts to a special investigation into the apps by the Cupertino company. Whereas an automatic takedown can be resolved within a few days, as happened to Qihoo last February, a manual removal by Apple can take longer to sort out, and there’s apparently no timescale for this process. The article claims that Qihoo’s CFO has even dashed to the US to help speed up the restoration of the apps to the App Store.

Banned apps

In the meantime, Qihoo’s iOS apps are, perhaps ironically, only available to users of jailbroken iPhones and iPads. Its Android apps are unaffected. The Qihoo apps missing from the App Store range from its 360 Mobile Assistant to its 360 Browser. This ban will be good news for rival Chinese browser makers, such as market-leading UC Browser or Tencent’s QQ Browser [1].

One possible alternative is that Apple is clamping down on apps that it deems are of little value, and that would affect Qihoo creations such as the afore-mentioned 360 Mobile Assistant, plus its 360 Battery Guard and lots of other ‘utility’ apps of that nature.

Aside from the suggestion that Qihoo’s apps damaged Apple’s ecosystem, it is thought that Qihoo’s iOS software also made use of banned APIs, and were engaged in repeated attempts to rig App Store rankings. Qihoo’s desktop applications are also under the spotlight in China where the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) has handed Qihoo an official warning for unfair competition involving collusion and dirty tricks in its Windows-based anti-virus and web browser offerings.

If Qihoo’s self-publishing of its iOS apps is part of the reason for being in trouble, then it would be a worrying precedent for many Chinese web companies and startups. Quite a number of them give users the requisite ‘.ipa’ file as a download so that jailbroken users can load the app outside of Apple’s App Store. It’s a common phenomenon in China with Android apps, but Google’s less draconian ecosystem does allow third-party app stores.

As we saw when Qihoo launched a search engine in China last summer, its large suite of apps is crucial to its massive traffic. So, while Android is used more widely in China, Qihoo will be hurting from being largely invisible to China’s iPhone and iPad users while this ban persists.

(Source: QQ Tech – article in Chinese)

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) currently has eight official Apple Stores in mainland China, and now the Cupertino company looks set to open a very different kind of facility in the country – a research and development lab. The China Business News claims that this is a done deal, and that an Apple R&D and procurement management facility will open in Shanghai’s Pudong district this summer. It cites the Sina Weibo account of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce as publicly stating that this is all confirmed.

[UPDATED 14 hours after posting: MorningWhistle says that an Apple insider has informed Chinese media: "The source said the new facility is to strengthen Apple’s management over its supply chain in China and has started to recruit high-level talent in the supply chain field in Shanghai." - So it's not actually for R&D].

The new Apple base is said to be three buildings that cost a total of US$8 million to rent each year, and will be at 385-397 Yuanshen Road. That seems to match a cluster of buildings on that street adjacent to Yuanshen stadium. Browsing through jobs listings reveals a lot of Apple jobs posted on third-party HR sites on January 27th for the Shanghai area, including positions such as AppleCare team manager, SPS business analyst, and an admin assistant for the Apple Online Store. So Apple’s Shanghai base could be a new customer service hub too.

Apple has not yet confirmed the move.

It might seem surprising not to set up this kind of base in Beijing, like in the capital’s tech-oriented Zhongguancun. But Apple will actually be following a lot of other big names such as Motorola and Microsoft in heading towards the younger, flashier, and much less terrifyingly polluted Shanghai.

We know that China snaps up 15 percent of Apple’s gadgets, and that iPhone sales in China doubled in 2012, so we can see that Apple’s fate is tied quite strongly to wealthier Chinese consumers. Asia-Pacific will soon firmly surpass Europe as Apple’s second-largest market:

(Sources: AppleInsider and Yicai (article in Chinese))

One of China’s top web companies, Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU), has been hit with a significant double blow. First, it was given an official warning about unfair competition with its desktop products; then, in an unrelated move, Apple has banned every single Qihoo app from its iOS App Store. The apps might reappear in a few days, but it’s not the first time this has happened to Qihoo.

As reported by Bloomberg today, Qihoo’s management was summoned to the Beijing Industrial and Commercial Administration Bureau and given “an executive warning that its use of anti-virus software in internet browsers was considered unfair competition.” Qihoo makes China’s top web browser in the form of ‘360 Safe Browser’ and the company first made its name with anti-virus apps for PCs.

Chinese netizens have long raised concerns about Qihoo’s practices with its desktop apps, notably the way that installing one of its apps often leads to a user being forced or coerced into installing others. Last year, researchers uncovered nine dastardly tricks that Qihoo’s web browser was using to exploit its users, including blocking the installation of some rival browser apps on Windows.

Aside from the Bureau’s warning, no punishment was meted out.

Qihoo slapped by Apple – again

But the bigger blow for Qihoo is that all of its iPhone and iPad apps have been removed by Apple from the iTunes App Store. This is not the first time. Almost 12 months ago, all Qihoo’s iOS apps were pulled from the store, only to be reinstated a few days later. We’ve reached out to Qihoo to comment on this, and will update if we hear back.

On that last occasion, Qihoo told us that the Apple ban was caused by “unusually high numbers of positive/negative feedback by unknown sources” which triggered an automatic temporary removal by Apple.

These kinds of vanishings happen in the iTunes App Store from time-to-time, often caused by Apple’s auto-detection systems suspecting that something untoward might be going on, such as an attempt to manipulate app rankings.

Aside from its apps, Qihoo runs China’s second-largest search engine, which arrived on the scene with a bang last summer. Qihoo’s rivalry with China’s top search company, Baidu, is ramping up across numerous categories, causing Baidu shares to suffer in the latter part of 2012. Baidu itself is pushing back, putting more resources in its own web browsers (both desktop and mobile), and building up anti-virus apps of its own.

(Sources: Bloomberg; via TheNextWeb)

That’s the most surprising finding in recent figures from Gartner which show that CoolPad’s Android-based phones have soared to third place in terms of the number of smartphones sold in China at the end of the previous year. CoolPad is one of four Chinese brands in the top six, a phenomenon we first noted last year when Canalys pointed out that domestic phone-makers now account for 60 percent of sales in China.

The CoolPad 8060, one of the phones now outselling the iPhone in China. (Image: ZOL.com.cn)

Going back to the Gartner numbers, China’s smartphone top six now looks like this:

• 1st - Samsung

• 2nd - Lenovo

• 3rd - CoolPad

• 4th - ZTE

• 5th - Huawei

• 6th - Apple

So how did CoolPad phones, made by the relatively tiny China Wireless Technologies (HKG:2369) which used to make PDAs and very unimaginative feature phones, manage to leap past the over-hyped and hallowed iPhone? And that’s despite Apple doubling iPhone sales in the country in 2012. As anyone following the progress of Android in China, you’ll have figured out how already. Android is one big reason, and price is the other. Basically, CoolPad is making a lot of serviceable – if not very trendy – phones for a mere 10 percent of the cost of an iPhone 5. The CoolPad 8060, for example, sells for just 500 RMB (US$80) unlocked, and is a highly affordable gateway to the smartphone world [1].

300 million smartphones to be sold in China in 2013

With smartphone sales at an estimated 189 million in China in 2012, and expected to reach 300 million by the end of 2013, Apple can no longer ignore the entry level market. To do so, some might say, would be to replicate the mistake of decades past that made Apple’s Mac OS into a fringe platform, dwarfed by the widely-used Windows. Apple might have an addressable market at the moment of a few hundred million Chinese middle-to-upper income individuals, but the larger potential market is people who can’t afford to pay out one, two, or three months’ salary for the current iPhone.

Although Apple would never go as low as CoolPad’s price points, there are rumors that Apple is pondering a lower-cost iPhone that could better help it battle Android in China and other important developing markets. Even if Apple aimed at half of the cost of the full iPhone, that would create a smaller iPhone priced at 2,500 RMB in China. That would at least put it closer to more well-specced Android devices in China (not CoolPad’s), such as the Xiaomi Mi2. The young phone-maker Xiaomi sold 7.19 million of its Android-powered phones in 2012, mostly to Chinese consumers.

In some ways, Xiaomi is the cool equivalent of CoolPad. While Xiaomi phones seem to be sold mostly to younger people, with 70 percent of them sold online, CoolPads are sold to a wider – and maybe less affluent – range of consumers from electronics retailers such as Gome and Suning.

CoolPad, then, represents the huge amount of people in China who’re ditching Nokia and feature phones, and jumping onto the cheapest thing that lets them play Temple Run 2. Apple needs to decide whether it wants to bring Xiaomi and CoolPad buyers closer to its price range, or forever push them – all half a billion of them – out of its exclusive club.

KuaiYong’s English-language PC app, a sort of Pirate Bay version of iTunes, is coming soon.

Earlier this month we looked at KuaiYong, a rogue app store that allows iPhone and iPad users to install pirated apps without needing a jailbreak. Far from being shut down by Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), the KuaiYong team has announced that it’s going global and will soon launch its knock-off iTunes replacement app in English.

We contacted KuaiYong both via email and their Sina Weibo page last week, and have yet to receive a response.

KuaiYong’s announcement also spells out its raison d’etre, saying that with its PC app it’s trying to solve the issue of many people, especially in China, being “not very familiar with the iTunes system and how to effectively manage it.” Without saying the word “piracy” at any point, the team adds:

In order for Chinese Apple fans to download applications securely, KuaiYong developed its own method of giving users access to thousands of free apps without having to jailbreak their devices. KuaiYong offers detailed descriptions of apps, free app download trial, iOS device management, and visual and audio file backup system. iOS system backup and recovery features will also be released in the very near future.

Our goal has always been about bringing Chinese Apple users with quick, convenient and pleasant iOS experience. Since the introduce of KuaiYong, the proportion of jailbreak in China has declined dramatically from 60 percent to around 30 percent. KuaiYong will hold on to this goal in the future and we would like to see more support for Apple as well as KuaiYong.

Of course, that decline in jailbreaking is not entirely down to KuaiYong. Perhaps more consumers in China are purchasing apps legitimately, and the increasing difficulty in finding iOS 6.0 jailbreaks is pushing people away from a jailbreak as an option. Maybe some of those are sick of not being able to customize their phones and have switched to Android. It’s hard to tell.

Whatever the reason, KuaiYong is intent on taking its piracy-oriented app worldwide, setting itself up for an inevitable clash, at some point, with Apple.

The iTunes App store supports payments in the local currency in China, and makes it easy to do so by supporting an array of local bank cards. If someone doesn’t fancy using the iTunes app on their PC, they could still use a replacement syncing app – such as Tencent’s ‘App Assistant for iPhone’ – and continue to purchase paid iOS apps on their phone. So KuaiYong is trying to legitimize itself by appearing to be solving a major problem, when there are already a number of adequate solutions out there already.

I’ve been looking at Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) annual ‘supplier responsibility’ reports for a few years now and, depressingly, they’re still battling the same ingrained problems among its Chinese partners, most notably child labor, forced excessive worker hours, and poor safety conditions. Year in, year out. Apple’s newest report is out today, and it details the same grim scene. For example, Apple details that it found, in its site inspections, one Chinese company where there were “74 cases of workers under age 16.”

That Apple supplier, Guangdong Real Faith Pingzhou Electronics, has been terminated, and the 2013 report points out that it’s also tackling the underlying problem by identifying and notifying authorities of any “third-party labor agent that willfully and illegally recruited young workers.” Indeed, one such agency in Shenzhen was found to have “conspired with families to forge age verification documents and make the workers seem older than they were.” No underage labor was found among final assembly partners, but clearly it’s still an issue lower down the supply chain:

11 facilities were found with underage labor, with a total of 106 active cases and 70 historical cases. In all but one case, the facilities had insufficient controls to verify age or to detect false documentation, but there was no intentional hiring of underage labor.

In such cases, the Cupertino company points out, “We require suppliers to return underage workers to school and finance their education at a school chosen by the family.”

Bonded labor and lost wages

Apple’s newest 37-page report was compiled by the Fair Labor Association (FLA), who also led the involved 393 audits throughout 2012, Apple’s most extensive investigation of its own complex supply chain. It covers 1.5 million workers not just in China but in a total of 14 countries.

Factory workers in Shanghai use the iMac-packed computer room after work.

As for other recurring issues that are prevalent among its Chinese and overseas suppliers, Apple claims to now have:

• An average of 92 percent compliance on a maximum 60-hour work week for factory-floor workers.

• Eight facilities were found with “bonded labor” – workers forced to stay due to the seizure of a large cash deposit.

• Apple got suppliers to return a total of US$6.4 million to workers in 2012 that had been held as a form of bonded labor, or taken as “excessive recruitment fees” to get a job at a plant.

• 102 facilities did not pay night-shift workers the appropriate pay for legal [public] holidays due to an incorrect interpretation of the law. So $2.3 million worth of past inaccuracies were given back to workers in 2012.

Toxic shock

Apple, which saw iPhone sales double in China in the past year, has also been under fire for safety issues and environmental damage among its suppliers. While “1.32 million workers got workplace safety training in 2012,” no mention is made of issues like the toxic cleaning substance n-hexane, which sickened many workers in 2011. But the report states that “chemical hazard management” was gradually implemented in 2012, and will be ready to be audited this year in readiness for evaluation in Apple’s next annual supplier report.

The full PDF report is here.

Apple said in total, it saw $7.3 billion in total revenue in China during the quarter. Tim Cook also said that the company — here’s a no-brainer — plans to open more Apple stores in the country:

I’m very happy with how things are going [with China...] It’s clear there’s a lot of potential there.

In fact, China has become such an important region to Apple that it has been split off from Apple’s Asia-Pacific operating segment, and made into a separate Chinese operating segment that includes the mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. This is mostly a corporate structural change, so it won’t have an impact on Apple’s day-to-day customers in China, but it does reflect the company’s increased focus on China and Chinese-speaking markets.

Our friends over at MakeMac spotted today that the Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) has approved Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) application to open both an online store and an official retail Apple Store in the country. It now seems likely, though not definite, that Jakarta will get its first ever Apple Store in 2013.

BKPM deputy chairman Azhar Lubis noted that Apple’s investment in the upcoming brick-and-mortar store is worth $2 million to $3 million, and speculated that the store will open “hopefully this year.”

An Apple Store in Jakarta won’t help the country get new gadgets launched there any faster – just ask Chinese consumers, who wait three or four months for official launches – but it will take away the hassle of being overly reliant on grey-import vendors for things like iPhones and iPads.

Apple’s iTunes store expanded its music and movie offerings to Indonesia (and India) just last month, so a full online store on the Apple site would be a welcome addition for many.

Aside from Apple’s retail push into the country, coming at a time when Google is hoping that its Android can steal the smartphone crown from Blackberry, there are still unsubstantiated reports of Apple opening an office in Jakarta.

Indonesia is also in the running to be a major new base for Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, which does final assembly of many Apple products. The latest twist in that saga suggests that Foxconn is keen to see regulations on imported handsets tightened – and a few tax sweeteners – before breaking ground on a factory in the country.

(Source: MakeMac – article in Indonesian)

We all know that China is important to Apple (even if you didn’t know it already, Tim Cook’s recent visit to China surely must have driven it home). It’s becoming Apple’s biggest market, but with average salaries still far below those of most Western countries, Apple needs to do more if it wants average Chinese people buying its products. To that end, it recently rolled out an installment payment plan and there are rumors that the company is considering making a low-cost smartphone in part to help capture a bigger slice of the Chinese smartphone market. The former is a great idea, and the latter is a terrible one. Here’s why:

A cheap smartphone ruins Apple’s brand image. Even more than in the west, Apple products are a luxury item and a status symbol in China. Part of the fun of buying the newest iPhone is showing it off on the street, and posting pictures of it to your weibo account. If every Li, Zhou, and Wang on the street is also carrying an Apple phone, showing off your own iPhone is going to be a lot less fun. There’s a reason Louis Vuitton doesn’t offer low-cost handbags, and that’s the reason why Apple won’t market a low-cost smartphone in China.

The only reason to sell one would be if Apple wants to abandon its slice of the luxury market (i.e., the customers it has in China now) in hopes of capturing a bigger slice of the low-cost market. But Apple probably doesn’t want to do that because…

Apple can’t compete and keep the margins it wants in the low cost market. Apple makes a ridiculous amount of profit off of its mobile devices. Seriously, the margins are so huge they border on offensive. But if Apple were to go after the low-cost market, it would have to settle for the same razor-thin profit margins and selling-at-cost because everyone else in the market is doing that. Xiaomi, for example, offers a pretty convincing competitor to the current iPhone at less than half its price. I’ve owned both phones, and I can honestly say that the only place I noticed a difference was in the camera (the Xiaomi’s camera is definitely worse).

If Apple were to start selling low-cost smartphones, though, it would be competing with Xiaomi, Meizu, and all the other low-cost, high-performance smartphones head to head. To offer similar performance at the same price points as those phones, Apple would have to slash its own profits. Even if the company was willing to do that (which I doubt), it would still have to compete with some pretty convincing homegrown alternatives even as its status as a luxury brand began to fade and the “cool factor” started to wear off. If the iPhone costs $700, Apple has nothing to fear from Xiaomi. But I think a $300 iPhone would face very serious challenges from a number of local competitors, and given the razor-thin margins, I don’t think any of it would be worth the effort.

Plus, adding more iPhone models would hurt Apple’s media domination. When an Apple mobile product launches in China it’s an event, and not just because some of the launches seem to end with violence. True, Apple’s marketing and media manipulation skills are incredible, but part of the reason for this is simply that Apple doesn’t release products that often. The more phone models it offers, the less exciting each new launch is. And that means less discussion on social media (a new Apple product now can dominate Sina Weibo’s trending topics list for days), less discussion in regular media (remember this?), and ultimately less overall interest.

I could be wrong of course (it wouldn’t be the first time), but if Apple launches a cheap smartphone in China I will be very surprised. Selling old models at reduced prices is one thing — that just reinforces that the newest model is the status symbol everyone should want — but selling a new model at a low price is quite another. Could it happen? Sure. But will it? No, it almost certainly won’t.

There has been a lot of discussion in the tech media recently following a Wall Street Journal story that suggested Apple had halved its order for iPhone 5s from supplier Foxconn in response to declining demand for the handset. The predictable backlash in the tech media was almost immediate. The truth is that we’ll have to wait for Apple’s sales numbers to be sure of the truth, but economic reports from China’s Henan province may point to a slight decline in the growth in demand for Apple iPhones. What the Henan data doesn’t point to is a huge cut in Apple’s iPhone orders.

Henan province is the home of one of Foxconn’s major manufacturing centers, and Foxconn Henan is responsible for producing more than half of the iPhones on the market today. Given that, Foxconn’s impact on Henan’s economy is tremendous, and the company accounts for more than 56 percent of the province’s total imports and exports. Recently-released economic data shows strong growth in the province and suggests Foxconn and its subsidiaries did nearly $3 billion in import/export business over the course of 2012.

But it also suggests that growth in demand for iPhones may be slowing. In 2011, phone exports from the province grew at a rate of 310 percent, but in 2012 that rate dropped to 251 percent. Is this evidence of decreased demand for the iPhone 5? No. But since Foxconn accounts for such a gigantic percentage of the province’s total exports, it could suggest that perhaps Apple’s consumer base is not growing as quickly as it once was. If true, that could ultimately lead to a reduction in orders. But I’ve seen nothing that substantiates the claims that Apple cut its orders in half. Since that order was reportedly given around a month ago in early to mid December, it certainly would have had some impact on Henan’s economic numbers for the year.

Nor have there been, as far as I’m aware, reports of mass layoffs at Foxconn or other Apple suppliers in December, which would certainly be likely in the event that Apple halved orders on one of Foxconn’s biggest manufacturing lines.

So, while I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that demand for iPhones has dropped slightly when Apple does release its own numbers, I rather doubt we’ll be seeing anything so dramatic as a 50 percent reduction. If that had happened, Apple would likely be unable to stop news of the aftershocks from leaking out from its China suppliers.

(China Business News via Sina Tech)

Tim Cook spotted yesterday at an Apple reseller’s store in Beijing. (Image: @yang_0909 on Sina Weibo)

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Tim Cook arrived in Beijing two days ago for yet another trip to China, but since then he has been moving in mysterious ways. According to QQ Tech, one of China’s biggest IT news sites, Cook visited China Mobile (NYSE:CHL; HKG:0941) HQ this morning to meet the new chairman Xi Guohua. The site claims that Cook’s social visit was confirmed by a China Mobile spokesperson.

[UPDATED 7 hours later: This is confirmed by Reuters just now. A China Mobile spokesperson told them: "In the morning, Apple's CEO Tim Cook visited China Mobile's headquarters. China Mobile's Chairman Xi Guohua and Tim Cook discussed matters of cooperation." Er, that's it].

It’s not clear what was discussed if Cook and Xi did indeed meet, but surely the talk will have covered a possible partnership. Currently, China Mobile, the world’s biggest telco, cannot carry the iPhone or iPad since its 3G network uses the unusual, homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G protocol, which no Apple devices support. While China Mobile has over 700 million subscribers, it’s not faring so well in the 3G stakes, in which it’s only marginally ahead of its much smaller rival, China Unicom. China has just over 200 million 3G subscribers in total.

If Apple will never support TD-SCDMA 3G, then China Mobile must wait for authorities to greenlight 4G going nationwide, which might happen later this year, but is much more likely to launch in 2014.

A trawl of Sina Weibo’s social search reveals no amateur paparazzi shots of Cook today. But yesterday he was spotted dropping into an Apple reseller (pictured above) in Beijing’s Chaoyang district. When Cook was Apple’s COO in mid-2011, he was spotted by a fast-snapping netizen as he strode through the foyer of the China Mobile HQ. If he was in the building again today, he did so with ninja stealth.

(Source: QQ Tech – article in Chinese)

Back in town: Apple’s Tim Cook today met with China’s tech minister, Miao Wei. (Image: Xinhua)

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Tim Cook arrived in Beijing earlier today where he got the full sitting-in-front-of-a-fancy-painting treatment as he met with Miao Wei, minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

According to the government department, Tim Cook and Miao Wei discussed the tech industry in China, the global mobile market, and Apple’s progress. Cook also met with the US ambassador to the country, Gary Locke, but no other details of the CEO’s itinerary have been revealed.

You might recognize MIIT as the enforcer that’s considering regulating China’s app market, and stands in the way of every Apple release so that the devices are usually delayed by as much as three or four months from their arrival in the US and other major markets. As such, it makes sense for a high profile firm like Apple have the boss make a very official visit.

Dropping in on China Mobile?

Many will speculate whether Cook will visit China Mobile, the world’s biggest telco, which cannot carry the iPhone or iPad since its 3G network uses the unusual, homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G protocol, which no Apple devices support. It’s conceivable that will change once 4G arrives in China, which might happen later this year.

Cook was last in China in March when he toured a Foxconn plant that contains a major Apple assembly line. Since that time a mere 10 months ago, Apple has pushed its retail efforts in the country, going from six to eleven stores. The gadget-maker most recently opened new Apple Stores in Chengdu and Shenzhen, far from the usual focus on consumers in Shanghai and Beijing.

Apple has quite a few worries in China, however. While Apple devices are still doing well in the country and remain a kind of status symbol for some, Android is dominating the smartphone landscape in the country thanks to its lower price-points, and those massive ‘phablets’ like the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 are stealing away wealthier customers from iOS. Oh, and app piracy.

(Source: iFeng Tech – article in Chinese; Photo: Xinhua)

Things were a little slow getting back into gear after the holiday break, but there was still some interesting tech news happening over the past week. And when there wasn’t we took a moment to reflect back on the past year, and looked ahead to what the new year holds for tech in Asia. With that in mind, here are our favorite stories from the past week.

Enricko’s pick: Chinese Startup Enables iOS App Piracy Without a Jailbreak

This week saw China’s KuaiYong making headlines on a lot of tech sites, including ours. The founder is ballsy for not only operating an illegal business, but also for letting the world (including Apple’s lawyers) know exactly who is running the company.

Minh’s pick: Study: Actually Only About 20,000 Twitter Users in China [INFOGRAPHIC]

I chose this article for two reasons: I love Twitter, and I love statistics. It’s also cool to note that while Sina Weibo is still dominant in China, that at least a few mainland Chinese are managing to log on to Twitter since it got blocked in 2009. China’s Great Firewall is not to be messed with.

Rick’s Pick: Apple’s Annual Lucky Bag Sale Delivers for Japanese Fanboys

Apple’s annual grab bag sale in Japan is always fun to watch. And unfortunately most of us have no choice but to watch, because if you want to take advantage of the sale you need to line up the day before. But as we saw this year, some lucky shoppers walked away with far more than they actually paid for!

Steven’s pick: China’s Biggest Tech Trend of 2013 Will Be ‘The Wall’

Using the internet in China can often feel like banging one’s head against a brick wall, so I enjoyed this post from my colleague, Charlie. His post is not just referring to the notorious and censorious Great Firewall, but to a whole range of regulatory and regional geopolitical issues that will make the Chinese internet – and, indeed, China as a whole – even more isolated in this new year.

Willis’ pick: Vietnamese Tech News Sites, Give Us More Vietnam and Less Silicon Valley

Minh wrote a very bold post to highlight the ugly truth about the Vietnamese press. In fact, this applies not just to Vietnam, but I think most major media sites in Asia aren’t writing much about their own startup ecosystems. This also explains why blogs like TechinAsia.com exist.

Charlie’s pick: Tmall Now Lets US Food Companies Ship Directly to Chinese Consumers

Food safety is a big issue in China, and imported (safe) foods are becoming big business. Expect to see a lot more of this sort of thing if the government doesn’t get involved to some degree.

With the recent closure of the iOS jailbreak app Installous, the mischievous hive-mind of the web has been looking for an alternative way of running pirated apps. And you won’t be too surprised to learn that China has the answer in the form of KuaiYong (literally meaning “use quickly”). It’s essentially a rogue app store in the form of a Windows PC app that allows pirated iPhone and iPad apps to be installed without even needing a jailbreak.

This alarming development means that pirating iOS apps has become as easy as it is on Android, where a number of third-party app stores in China carry ripped-off apps. KuaiYong touts itself as supporting even iOS 6 on any device, since no jailbreak is needed. Its own tagline says: “New apps every day, you don’t need to understand mobiles and jailbreaking, don’t need iTunes, don’t need to login – just pick an app, download and install, and use it.”

KuaiYong was spotted by TheNextWeb today. Digging back through KuaiYong’s official Sina Weibo account (here), it actually launched the first beta of its rogue app back in June 2012. Being only in Chinese seems to have caused it to go under the radar for so long, though there are a few demo videos and written guides out on the web showing everyone how to use KuaiYong on their own iPhones or iPads.

In deep shit? KuaiYong founder.

TheNextWeb goes on to point out that KuaiYong is basically using bulk enterprise licensing to bypass Apple’s safeguards. So the Chinese service is essentially distributing the exact same app – with the same license ID – over and over again.

More trawling through Weibo suggests that the man behind KuaiYong is Xie Lei (pictured right; his Weibo page), who calls himself the CEO of this rather dodgy new Chinese startup. Just a few days ago he posted that KuaiYong now has five million users, and for some reason attached a photo of the top of his shaved head along with that snippet of info. It was posted from his iPhone. We wonder when Mr. Xie will get a call from Apple’s lawyers.

Kompas recently reported that Apple has appointed a person to be the company’s head of marketing for Indonesia. This is the latest update on Apple’s expansion program for the country, which looks set to be realized this year.

The report states that a regional Apple executive will soon move to Jakarta. That person is now stationed in Singapore for the next three to six months before being transferred to Jakarta.

Previous signs that Apple is preparing an office in Indonesia include the company’s job vacancy listings for positions in Indonesia back in June last year. Apple also opened its Indonesian iTunes Music Store last month, with its App Store supporting the Indonesian currency back in October.

[Source: Kompas via MakeMac]

Photo from Appbank.net

While Christmas has come and gone for most of us, here in Japan there was quite a bit of excitement this morning as Apple held its annual ‘Lucky Bag’ sale at seven retail stores around the country. These lucky bag sales are a New Year’s tradition here in Japan, although few generate the excitement of Apple’s sale. Some bloggers have already posted pictures of their loot from this morning, so I thought we might take a look.

Over on the Japanese Apple blog AppBank, @Kazuend describes that in order to secure a place in line, he lined up at 6pm yesterday and was still 50th from the front. It’s a long wait in pretty cold weather, and there’s really no guarantee that you’re going to like the items that come in your lucky bag, which is priced at 33,000 yen ($380). But @Kazuend was apparently one of the lucky ones, as he figures his haul is worth about 95,000 yen (almost $1,100). Here’s what he got:

• Range Messenger bag, about $90
• iPad, 16GB wi-fi model, about $450 [1]
• Beats Solo HD headphones, about $230
• Apple New Year’s T-shirt, price unknown
• Logicool Keyboard cover for iPad, about $115
• Carbon Audio Zooka wireless speaker bar, about $92
• Lightning USB camera adaptor, about $33
• Mophie Juice Pack, about $80

Photo from Appbank.net

There are some other folks who were even luckier, coming away with a Macbook Air, which appears to be the best possible prize in this year’s bags. There’s a handy roundup of a many people’s lucky bags here in Japanese if you’d like to explore the phenomenon a little deeper. Looking at the contents, it’s hard not to be tempted to go line up next year.

I’m curious to hear if any of our readers braved the elements to sit in the cold for a lucky bag this year. If so, let us know in the comments.

Taiwan’s Digitimes Research has a new report out looking at the smartphone landscape in mainland China. It states that sales of smartphones in China – across all platforms, like iPhone and Android – are expected to grow 137 percent year-on-year to 189 million devices in 2012.

It’s expected that 86 percent of fourth quarter sales in China will be Android phones (with 50.8 million Androids sold in Q4). For the year as a whole, that amounts to an impressive 157 million Android smartphones sold in China during the whole year, which is up 260 percent from a year ago.

The new report also signals a shift towards Chinese consumers favoring domestic smartphone brands, with local brands expected to account for 61 percent of China’s smartphone market in 2012 led by Lenovo. That syncs with Canalys data we saw last month which pointed out that China’s top five smartphone brands are, in descending order, Samsung, Lenovo, CoolPad, Huawei, and ZTE. That’s very bad news for the once-beloved HTC; as for other overseas phone-makers, only Samsung and Apple appear to be making a strong showing this year.

This all seems to be on a par with what Canalys said earlier this year. It found that China “accounted for 27 percent of the 158 million global smartphone shipments” back in Q2 alone.

[Source: Digitimes and Digitimes Research]

While it’s still Christmas Day in the Western hemisphere, those of us here in Asia are waking up on Boxing Day right now, and that likely means that we’re also seeing the first post-Christmas online sales. Here in Japan, I’m also seeing a promotion for my favorite holiday sales event, Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) one-day ‘Lucky Bag’ sale, which has just been confirmed for January 2nd and will take place in seven stores nation wide.

If you’re not familiar with this sale, it’s essentially a very expensive grab bag of goodies from the Apple store, priced at 33,000 yen (or about $390). It usually includes things things like iPods, headphones, and accessories, but sometimes lucky shoppers will hit the big time and get a Macbook or an iPad, which pushes the value way past the price of the bag. Last year there were also Apple T-shirts, and even the bag itself looks sort of cool. I predict more than a few customers will see iPad Minis this year too.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to get in line very early if want one of these Lucky Bags. People typically begin lining up at the Apple store on the night before, so if you show up in the morning, and still manage to secure a bag — well, consider yourself lucky. I tried a couple of years ago, but walked away disappointed.

Now, if you’re not in Japan, you can expect Apple to soon announce some sales where you are too. Fans in China especially can look forward to an announcement soon, as the dragon graphic [1] for the Japan sale (pictured above) looks like it was designed with China in mind. Last year we saw Apple promote new years sales all across Asia on a Friday, so I expect we’ll see something similar this year, perhaps for next Friday, January 4. Stay tuned!

Mac fans camped out for the last Lucky Bag sale, with this lineup extending up the hill from the Apple Store in Shibuya, Tokyo. (Photo AppBank.net)

After the dismal launch of the Apple Maps app, I knew I needed an alternative. I had been using Google Maps prior to the roll-out of iOS 6 and decided to try something new – a mapping service that I had known about since high school, nearly a decade ago.

Street Directory is a twelve-year-old company and now has more than 300 employees across Asia. Its core business, as the name suggests, is producing digital street maps and providing users with navigation services in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Hong Kong. The maps are accurate, which is always good, but beyond that, there are three additional features that I find very useful:

1. Informative

Street Directory’s map app is more informative than many apps on the market. For its map of Singapore, the company has smartly included the bus arrival times at each bus stop. People are able to see availability and arrival times of the buses by tapping on a bus stop. The app has also included businesses operating in a given building, so people can tap on a specific building and see what’s inside.

2. Suggestion of routes and transportation

The app also gives good suggestions for the best route and transportation to take whenever you’re going somewhere. By tapping on their destination and their current location, users can see various ways of going to destination; car, taxi, bus, or a mix of bus and train. If you choose a cab, it even gives you the approximate cab fare!

3. Offline maps

Street Directory has an offline version of its maps for major cities in the countries it serves. This is especially useful when you are traveling and going to places where 3G services are not reliable.

So far, I am still happy with the Street Directory map to help me navigate my way around Singapore and Indonesia. But in other countries which aren’t covered, such as Vietnam and Thailand, Google Maps is still the default map app for me. However, both apps are missing the map scale on their mobile apps, which would come in handy for users who want to know how far away a destination is.

Both the app and its offline versions are free on iOS, and Android versions are still in development. For people who wish to try it out, you can download the maps at the following links: Singapore Maps, Malaysia Maps, Indonesia Maps.

Screen shots of Street Directory app

With Vietnam having more than 130 million mobiles in a country of 90 million and growth projected at five percent year-on-year, what’s the mobile OS breakdown? When you look at the stats from Ericsson’s Mobility Report a few months back, Vietnam seems to be a bit of an anomaly in the region. Android and iOS are equally faced off in terms of market share, but Symbian still rules. Most of the folks you see on the street are carrying the usual durable Nokia phones.

I think this is odd when you consider Nokia’s steady decline since the rise of more modern smartphone platforms, but the predominance of Symbian makes sense in a country that is still mostly rural and still developing its own internet culture. More than 60 percent of the population is outside of the cities, after all. Nokia has recognized this and started plans to build its first factory in Vietnam. But this might be too late without a powerful and attractive smartphone OS of its own. Nokia is far from having a modern ecosystem that facilitates app markets. That’s essentially what has made Android and iOS phones so appealing to consumers around the world – and increasingly in Vietnam too.

Android and iOS are head-to-head at 21 percent each in the overall mobile OS share. This will most likely trend in the direction of Android as its phones are getting cheaper, more powerful, and more accessible. Every major electronics store in Vietnam carries Android phones. iPhones, on the other hand, are found mainly in official Apple resellers and are always pricey. Although older models like the iPhone 3GS and 4 are getting cheaper, products like the iPhone 5 are expensive to the point of being inaccessible to the vast majority of people. For Apple fans, new is more appealing than old. Why would I buy an old iPhone if I can get a new Android-powered Samsung for the same price or less? In Vietnam, the iPhone5 so far has been a loser.

With Blackberry OS at six percent and the new Windows Phone at two percent, their impact won’t be felt until late 2013, by which time RIM will have BB10 ready to roll. Both RIM and Microsoft are intent on cultivating a huge app ecosystem for their platforms but I’m still waiting to see if they can actually execute. Early 2013 will clearly be a battle between Symbian, iOS, and Android. A battle that, like in China, Android is bound to win.

This week was a surprisingly busy one in China technology news, with Apple finally dropping its new iPhone and a few new retail stores to boot. We also saw some interesting developments in the chat app space, with a foreign player entering China to challenge the dominant Weixin (Wechat). In case you missed any of the action, here’s a quick roundup of the past week’s headlines.

1. Is Firefall, The9’s Free-to-Play FPS Gamble, Any Good?

Early in the week Charlie gave us his impressions of Firefall, having participated in a closed beta. Unfortunately the much-anticipated FPS did not make a great first impression.

2. Tencent’s WeChat is a Threat to Everyone

The WeChat chat app has certainly impressed many in China and around Asia with its rapid rise to popularity. But there are some concerns about security and privacy for its users.

3. Line App Launches in China, Keen to Fight with WeChat

Right on cue, enter NHN Japan’s Line app to see if it can take a bite of the China’s messaging market. It has a tough road ahead, and it’s unlikely that it could ever catch up with WeChat (Weixin) in China – but it doesn’t necessarily have to. If it can get even a portion, then NHN Japan will likely be pleased to have a channel to market its other games and apps.

4. China’s App Apocalypse? Regulators Explain, Developers Worried

Will China’s MIIT institute registration or permit procedures to regulate apps in the country? This news has many developers are worried that a change in landscape might be on the way.

5. CONFIRMED: Google Shopping Search Engine for China Shuts Today

Another Google service bites the dust in China, as the Google Shopping service is finally closed up. Google hopes to refocus efforts on products that are doing well, namely AdMob, its mobile advertising platform, which is doing quite well in China.

6. You’ll Never Guess What The9 and ZTE Are Teaming Up to Work On

These two Chinese companies will be joining forces to create an internet television joint venture, aiming to reach 90 percent of Chinese households within two or three years.

7. iPhone 5 Finally Launched in China, No Reports of Violence

In perhaps our favorite non-news news of this week, the iPhone 5 finally launched in China without any reports of violence. In what was a busy week for Apple, the company also launched retail stores in Hong Kong and way out in Chengdu too.

That’s all for this week, folks! For our full spread of China coverage, you can click here or subscribe to our China RSS feed.

Ready to roll: The new Apple Store in Chengdu.

Mainland China gets its eighth – and most far-flung – official Apple Store tomorrow with the opening of one way out in China’s fast-developing western outposts. The new Apple Store will be in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, which is known around the world (perhaps spelled “Szechuan”) as the home of the nation’s spiciest food.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) says the new Chengdu store will open at 8am tomorrow in the MixC mall.

It’s the first time that Apple has ventured outside of China’s wealthier coastal regions (Shanghai and Beijing now have three Apple Stores each, plus one for Shenzhen), with Chengdu being 2,000 kilometres inland from Shanghai. But the city is no backwater, and it is one of many “second-tier” cities in China that are packed with new wealth, driving forward everything from Chinese e-commerce to sales of all kinds of luxury brands. And, for many, Apple is up there with Chanel as a brand to be seen with.

The iPhone 5 launched in China earlier today, so it’s good timing for the newest store. The iPhone 5 rollou, like the one for the iPad Mini last Friday, seemed subdued with no large queues.

Tomorrow there’ll also be a new – and very dramatic – Apple Store opening in Hong Kong, which is the area’s third.

Here’s the new Chengdu store listed on Apple’s retail site.

[Kudos to reader ‘njren’ for pointing this store opening to us; Images: Chengdu.cn]

Images courtesy of @hypercasey on Instagram.

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) third official Hong Kong store opens tomorrow morning and already the covers are off, giving everyone a great view of the three-floor, glass-fronted shop. The newest Apple Store is over in the Causeway Bay area, and takes up a huge corner of the luxury-oriented Hysan Mall.

Hong Kong-based Apple enthusiast and sometime NeonPunch blogger Casey Lau has been in the store already and has been generously sharing out photos to his Instagram and Google+ pages.

The street view shows how the spectacular new Apple Store appears to have no walls, throwing as much natural light inside as can possibly be found on ground level amidst Hong Kong’s cluttered skyline:

The third floor is mainly a Genius Bar, while the second floor seems to be devoted to Macs:

Click to see the 2nd floor close up.

And there’s a customary glass staircase:

There’ll be special T-shirts for some early birds at the Causeway Bay store tomorrow for its grand opening at 9am. Its normal opening time is 11am to 11pm.

Check out our report on Apple’s most recent earnings to see just how crucial the whole China area is to the company.

[Sources: Casey Lau on Instagram and Google+]

If you’re not interested in the iPhone, today might be a good day to take a break from Chinese tech sites. As of 5 AM, here’s what Sina Tech’s mobile news portal’s domestic news section looks like. You don’t need to be able to read Chinese to figure out the theme here:

Interestingly, although China Telecom and China Unicom hosted midnight launches at various locations across the city, the phone actually isn’t available directly from Apple yet, as Apple Stores are closed and the company’s China website won’t begin selling the handsets until 7 A.M.

Of course, for plenty of Chinese Apple fans, the iPhone 5 is old news, as gray-market imports from the US and Hong Kong have been available in China for months already. The release of the official version should knock gray market import prices down a peg or two, but importers will still be able to sell them at a profit because the taxes China levies on the official version still makes it cheaper to purchase in Hong Kong or the US than it is in China.

[Image via Sina Tech]

Google Zeitgeist map

It’s that time of year again, when we see all sorts of media publishing a barrage of year-in-review pieces. Obviously some are better than others, and one of my favorites so far is Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) extensive presentation of hot topics from the past year. Its Zeitgeist 2012 page is a fun overview of what the world was searching for over in 2012, as is its video summary which is included below.

So what was big in Asia over the past year? Google points out that all things mobile proved to be very hot this year. Asia’s fascination with mobile, if it wasn’t apparent already, was hard to miss in 2012, as Apple’s iPad 3 was a trending search in China, but so were ‘Android games.’ The iPad Mini and iOS 6 were popular in Japan, as were searches about popular chat app Line, and how to use it. Samsung had a successful year in 2012, and in Vietnam the Samsung’s Galaxy was one of the most popular searches. Even in India, the perpetual vaporware Aakash tablet was a trending search.

As for the most discussed topics, it’s pretty fascinating to note that while PSY’s infectious Gangnam Style was the second most popular search worldwide (behind the late Whitney Houston), that certain Asian regions proved practically immune from this viral video, notably India, Japan, and Taiwan.

If you’d like to drill down to see more insights about your own country, do head over to Google’s Zeitgeist page and give it a try. It’s pretty fascinating.

Google isn’t alone in its efforts to summarize the past year for us. Twitter has an insightful overview of what the world was talking about in the past year, as well as a function that lets you view your own personal year of Tweeting via a Vizify page. In much the same way, Facebook has a clever personalized Year-in-Review page where you can see a summary of all your 2012 activity.

What will you remember most about 2012? Let us know in the comments.

In browsing the top app charts for Japan, I stumbled across an unusual application called ‘Big or Small.’ Currently the eighth most popular free app, it’s is a quiz game which tests your ability to guess whether a ladies… um… assets are… well, big or small — just by looking at their face. So in the interests of science, I took the app for a test run.

The application features photos of over 400 women, grouped into different categories like celebrity, cosplay, gyaru, and others. I have no idea how the application’s publisher collected these photos, but I’m willing to bet that most of these girls didn’t sign up for this. There isn’t any nudity involved here, but be warned that some of the banner ads are a little risqué.

In any case, my brief experience with the app didn’t do much but prove that I’m really not very good at this type of classification exercise (scoring only 5/10 correct, see below) — although it isn’t for lack of paying attention back during my school days.

I’m not certain that such an app will have a very long life in the app store, so if you’d like to test it out, download it while you can (note: it’s in Japanese). The idea of such a game will likely be offensive to many outside Japan I expect. But I’ll leave that to you to decide. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Apple’s third carrier partner in Indonesia for the iPhone 5, Indosat, is going to begin accepting pre-orders tomorrow. The operator is working with Mandiri Bank’s e-commerce store Tokone.com to sell the most affordable iPhone 5 bundling packages so far in the country. The price list is below (in rupiah, then dollars):

Interestingly, Indosat sells the white 32GB iPhone 5 for IDR 750,000 ($78) cheaper than the black version. The price listed above is the final price, including zero percent interest for up to two years of monthly payments. Indosat will also give monthly bonuses of talk time, SMS, and data services during the payment period. The handsets can only be ordered by using Mandiri’s credit cards.

If compared to Telkomsel’s cheapest bundling packages, Indosat’s iPhone deal is cheaper by IDR 1 million ($104). The steep price difference may be able to convince a few customers to go with Indosat instead.

Indosat’s website states that the pre-order have been available since December 7th, but after confirming it with a company representative, the pre-orders are actually going to start tomorrow as a result of some technical problems. XL Axiata hasn’t released its iPhone 5 price list yet, and it looks like the company doesn’t plan to open online pre-orders like Apple’s two other partners.

For more information, you can check out the Indosat and Tokone websites.

Image by Casey Lau.

Nearly three months after Hong Kong got its second official Apple Store, it’s all set for a third, which is due to open quite soon – likely before Christmas – in the Causeway Bay area.

The newest addition to Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) growing retail presence in Asia will be its most dramatic in Hong Kong yet. Located over a couple of floors on one corner of the luxury brand-oriented Hysan Mall, the store is currently partly obscured by Apple’s own teaser posters – “An opening you simply can’t miss” – placed across what seems set to be a multi-floor glass storefront.

Image by Li Chen. Click to enlarge.

In street-level photos from Casey Lau and our own Li Chen, it’s clearly an area with a great deal of passing foot traffic. The first Apple Store in the Chinese city is in the IFC mall, a few miles away also on Hong Kong island.

Apple has not yet confirmed the opening date for its newest shop, but Hong Konger Casey Lau said on Twitter over the weekend that “you’ll be able to shop there before the 25th,” meaning that it’d open in good time for the Christmas and New Year shopping rushes. And, perhaps more importantly, before Chinese New Year.

Asia set to be Apple’s 2nd-biggest region

Apple’s shift to international retail stores has been dramatic in recent years, after perhaps hitting saturation point in the US. But it still leaves a lot of surprise omissions in Asia, such as the lack of an official store in places like Singapore. But, as MacStories recently revealed in some fun number crunching, Apple’s retail ambitions truly went global in 2009, and in 2012 the company looks set to see 83 percent of its store openings in non-US locations:

With the Greater China area – which includes Hong Kong – accounting for 15 percent of Apple revenue in its most recent financials, Asia-Pacific is close to permanently surpassing Europe to become Apple’s second biggest region:

[Sources: 9to5Mac, Casey Lau (@hypercasey), and Chen Li on G+]

Apple’s latest handset, the iPhone 5 is set to be available on December 14th in Indonesia. Two operator partners – Telkomsel and Indosat XL Axiata have made their first move to sell the handset in the country, with the former becoming the first operator partner to open online pre-orders today. Telkomsel is dishing out the following bundling prices for the handsets. Interestingly, the bundling package is only available for the company’s Halo card users, and not for other Telkomsel SIM cards like Simpati and As.

We also have the converted rate for the iPhone 5:

Users would need to make a down-payment of IDR 500,000 ($52) at the pre-order registration process. Telkomsel believes that even in a market dominated by Blackberry, the iPhone 5 will be a big hit.

Customers who have pre-ordered their iPhones can pick up the gadgets at a few pick-up points located in Jakarta, Bandung, and Surabaya between December 14th to 16th. The telco operator wants to give its customers the convenience of reserving the phones online and picking the phones up without the hassle of queueing in lines because of the high demand.

Telkomsel plans to offer pre-paid bundling packages for Simpati users in the near future. For registration and more information, you can check here.

In the meantime, another mobile operator, XL Axiata, will also be starting iPhone 5 sales on December 14th at Xplor Centers in Central Park and Senayan City. The company promises comfort for customers during the queuing process with its ‘Antri Like a King’ program (antri means “queue”). The comforts XL Axiata promise include the ability for queuers to step out to buy food and take a walk without losing their place in the queue. The company even offers massages for tired customers at the event. You can register and check more information about it here.

Ctrip told TechWeb that the issue was a problem with procedures that was being adjusted, and as of this writing the app appears to be back online. But Youku told TechWeb they were communicating with Apple to figure out what had happened, and as of right now, the Youku app still appears to be missing from the app store. MapBar is also still missing, and while the company hasn’t commented, it’s possible that Apple has removed the app for providing a service similar to its own much-hated Apple Maps. Given the unpopularity of that service and its utter uselessness in Asia, that would be a pretty spiteful move, but until MapBar or Apple make a statement about what has happened here, there’s no way to be sure.

It seems likely that Youku’s app, and probably MapBar’s app too, will be returned before long, and the whole thing may have just been a technical glitch. It’s also worth noting that users with these apps already installed on their phones didn’t experience any interruptions of service, so if the apps return soon, the damage done will be minimal. Still, it has got to hurt to search for your own app and see you competitors pop up in the spot where yours is supposed to be.

[via TechWeb]

This morning, China Mobile CEO Li Yue announced that the telecom provider is planning to launch its own line of branded mobile phones. Li also said that the company will “definitely” continue and strengthen its work on a partnership with Apple to officially sell the iPhone. At present, China Mobile does not sell phones of its own, and it is China’s only major telecom provider not to offer the iPhone (although many China Mobile users do use jailbroken iPhones on the company’s 2G network).

If you’re excited about the Apple news, don’t be: Li’s statement is pretty vague and the company has previously said quite clearly that it won’t offer the iPhone until 2014. The news about a China Mobile-branded line of phones is more interesting, though. Li asserted that this would not harm competition in the mobile space and that China Mobile would pursue a “Wal-Mart” model of sorts, selling its own phones alongside the handsets of other brands in its stores.

That announcement, too, is a bit premature, as Li said the company is ramping up its plans but is still in negotiations with supplier factories. That process takes time, as does design, manufacturing, and marketing, so I wouldn’t expect to see China Mobile handsets sitting on store shelves any time too soon.

It’s also interesting that China Mobile is making a move into hardware around the same time as SARFT is making a move into China Mobile’s territory: telecommunications services. This is almost certainly a coincidence, but it’s a coincidence I think is worth noting. It will be interesting to see if any of China’s other telecom providers are considering similar approaches.

[via TechWeb]

Even with Android dominating, the Apple brand still strikes a chord with the Vietnamese consumer | photo via http://biz.cafef.vn/

The iPhone5 will soon hit Apple Stores and authorized resellers in 54 countries across the world. In Asia, that includes:

• South Korea (Dec 7)
• Indonesia (Dec 14)
• Malaysia (Dec 14)
• Philippines (Dec 14)
• Taiwan (Dec 14)
• China (Dec 14)
• and finally, Vietnam (Dec 21)

Of course in Vietnam, like most other countries with devout Apple fans, this isn’t big news. Since Tim Cook announced the iPhone 5 on September 12th the handsets were easily available for purchase at local smartphone shops and resellers. The first problem was making sure that the nano-sim was properly shaved and cut to fit the iPhone 5’s reduced size SIM slot. The final barrier was getting telecom service on the phone. Yesterday’s announcement now reassures Apple fans that Viettel, Mobifone, and other services will soon offer iPhone5 service.

With Android handsets cheaper and more widespread, and no official Apple Store on Vietnamese soil, Android has quickly climbed to the top of the Vietnamese smartphone market. With the iPhone 5 putting Apple back on top of the smartphone world, will it do the same in Vietnam?

The culture around “Vietnam’s Apple” closely parallels China’s bootlegging culture where Chinese smartphone suppliers also got their hands on the iPhone 5 well before the latest announcement. After the phone was officially announced, China Unicom’s pre-orders have hit over 100,000 on just the first day of availability. Vietnam will certainly be following this sort of trend.

Apple’s iTunes began to accept payments for apps in the currencies of India and Indonesia in October of this year – and that’s the basis for today’s rollout of the iTunes Music Store in those countries. But it’s not just tunes, as India and Indonesia also get movie purchases and rentals.

It’s part of a huge expansion of the iTunes Music Store to 56 new countries today, but only four of them get support for movies (and only those two in Asia). In this region, music sales are now available in (courtesy of a neat list by MacRumors):

Just 5,000 rupiah per song in Indonesia’s iTunes Music Store. Click to enlarge.

• Asia Pacific: Fiji, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Micronesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

Today’s action brings the iTunes Music Store to 119 countries in total. China is still off the list, though it does have apps and local currency support.

Some prices in the new music store in Indonesia seem reasonable, with one K-Pop album I spotted costing just IDR 30,000 (US$3.15); but the purchase of the HD version of the movie The Raid costs a full IDR 149,000 ($15.60).

Both India and Indonesia have a books section in the iTunes store, but those remain just a very limited selection of free titles.

Last summer, Indonesian authorities made moves to shut down 20 notorious illegal music-sharing sites, and even targeted blocking overseas sites that encouraged piracy, such as 4shared. But, 4Shared is accessible in the country today, and even locally-based file-sharing sites like musik-corner.com were never actually shut down by authorities.

[Source: MacRumors]

Two of Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) newest gadgets have emerged from the Kafkaesque trial of China’s tech regulators to hit stores in early December. Apple has just confirmed that the iPad mini and the updated iPad will go on sale in China on December 7th (Friday), followed by the iPhone 5 a week later on December 14th.

But only the wifi versions of the fourth-gen iPad and the brand-new iPad Mini will be coming to China next week, resulting in an even longer wait for those who’d like to use them on 3G in the country.

As is the new custom, Apple is waging war on scalpers with its reservation system. Tonight’s announcement points out:

Reservation requests will be accepted daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. [local time] beginning Thursday, December 6 for pick up the following day.

The same will apply for the iPhone 5 a week later. But right now, Apple hasn’t updated its mainland China site, which is still touting the iPhone 4S.

Just last night, my colleague Charlie pointed out that the iPhone 5 had been issued its regulatory permit from MIIT, so its arrival next month is no surprise.

In Apple’s most recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook pointed out that China now accounts for 15 percent of Apple’s sales, where it saw iPad shipments up 45 percent for Greater China, while iPhone sales were up 38 percent.

[Source: Engadget Mobile]

Eagle-eyed reporters at TechWeb today have spotted some good news for Apple fans in China: the iPhone 5 has finally received its network permits from MIIT. Permits were issued for both the China Telecom and China Unicom versions of the phone, which means that both versions of the handset should go on sale shortly.

Apple’s official China site still hasn’t announced a launch date, but the network permits are generally the last major regulatory hurdle between a wireless device and commercial release in China. TechWeb reporters spotted the permits on MIIT’s official site, and although it can be difficult to be certain what device the permits refer to because they only list model numbers, it seems pretty clear in this case that the iPhone 5 is the device in question.

It seems likely now that the phone will be released in December, which is more or less on par for Apple’s usual three-month delay when releasing wireless products in China. The iPhone 5 was announced and launched for most of the world back in September, but as with all Apple devices, Chinese Apple fans have had to wait while government bureaus run the devices through the usual round of tests before issuing it a network permit — or just buy a gray-market import from the US or Hong Kong.

Despite the widespread availability of the gray-market handsets, official iPhones are so popular that the last time Apple launched one here, it was forced to shut down its Beijing flagship store because of rioting phone scalpers fighting in the long overnight line to get the phones. Will the next iPhone launch in China be as contentious — and violent — as the last one was? Hopefully not, but you never know. Either way, we don’t recommend getting in any overnight lines for the phone before the launch, as Apple will likely continue its recent policy of making customers reserve the phones online before picking them up in stores to avoid violence.

[via TechWeb]

China has, at present, 390 million mobile internet users among its billion-strong phone subscribers. And now new data for 2012 Q3 from Beijing-based mobile analytics startup Umeng claims that, among all those mobile users, Chinese consumers have snapped up just over 200 million iPhones and Android smartphones. Of those, 60 million are iPhones, and 140 million of them are Android-powered devices.

The researchers reckon that 200 million figure has rocketed up from a mere 87 million iOS and Android phones in China in 2012 Q1. Though these stats are not based on sales figures, it’s good to have a reasonable sounding figure for only Apple’s and Google’s mobile OSes as they ascend to replace the outdated Symbian and JAVA-based touchscreens. Here’s the key graph for the Q2-to-Q3 explosion in just iPhones and Androids:

That stellar growth is sort of backed up by Canalys’ recent finding that smartphone sales were up 199 percent in China this year, with 42 million shipped in the country in Q2 alone. Of course, that stat doesn’t fully satisfy the larger leap that the Umeng stats claim, and it’s worth noting that the data is based on observed usage of certain apps on Umeng’s network, not of shipped/sold phones.

Of all those shipping smartphones in China, the top four were all predominantly makers of Android phones, and the fifth in the line-up was Apple itself, so it’s clear iOS and Android are seeing insane growth. This is proving to be the dawn of a heyday for Chinese-brand smartphone makers like Lenovo and Huawei.

China’s smartphone market is far from sated, with still hundreds of millions of people ripe for upgrading to smartphones as wages rise and the prices of (some) devices drop. That’s a major force behind Android’s growth as it now dominates in China.

[Source: Umeng’s 2012 Q3 report - article in Chinese; Background photo in main image from creativityinspiresme.wordpress.com]

Kyodo is reporting that Japanese carriers Softbank (TSE:9984) and KDDI (TYO:9433) say they will launch Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) new iPad Mini with cellular connectivity one week from today, on Friday, November 30th. The wi-fi only model previously launched in Apple stores back on November 2nd in Japan.

Softbank and KDDI will also start selling the fourth generation iPad on Friday.

Both companies had a good month in October, especially KDDI which added a net of 152,700 subscribers. In comparison, Softbank managed to add a net of 37,900 subscribers. Both carriers offer the iPhone 5, and have reportedly lured a number of new customers from NTT Docomo which saw a loss of 189,800 subscribers in October.

Docomo is still, by far, the market leader with over 60 million total subscribers.

The iPhone 5 may be old news to the rest of the world, but Apple still hasn’t officially launched the device in China. And while there’s still no official release date for the device, some China retailers including Beijing Telecom have already started taking preorders, suggesting that the official launch may be imminent.

In the run-up to the launch, China Telecom and China Unicom are preparing to rake in buckets of cash, but gray-market vendors are having to adjust their sky-high prices to prepare for the impending launch. Gray-market imported iPhone 5s from Hong Kong, for example, have dropped by around 1,000 RMB ($160) in the last week as the news pointing to an impending official launch piles up. At the moment, many gray-market phones on Taobao are selling for less than 5,000 RMB ($793), which puts them within just a few hundred RMB of the what the iPhone 5s official price is likely to be when it is released.

This is the circle of gray-market life in China, though, and it’s something that phone scalpers deal with each year, as the demand for imports drops substantially once it becomes clear that the official versions of the phone will be released soon in China. That said, with no official release date announced yet, scalpers can likely squeak out a few more weeks of meager profits before the actual release of the phone requires them to reduce their prices even further.

Either that, or switch to selling gray-market iPad Minis instead.

None of China’s three mobile telcos have yet set a date for the arrival of the iPhone 5 – though only two of them (China Telecom and China Unicom) are in contention.

China Telecom said last week that it hoped to roll out the phone late November or early December. iPhones and iPads generally hit China long after most other major markets, with a typical delay of three to four months – which is a quarter to a third of the entire product’s life-cycle. Little wonder that so many eager early-adopters are willing to pay premiums from grey-importers who ship in devices (without paying sales tax) from Hong Kong or other countries.

Chinese tech blogs such as Techweb report that China Telecom is preparing one million nano-SIM cards for its own iPhone 5 official launch. The smallest of the three carriers in terms of 3G users, China Telecom has already been handing out free nano-SIM cards to customers who bought grey-import iPhone 5 models from other countries – as have its two other rivals. Clearly the company feels it needs a lot more of those things for its official offerings.

Nano-SIMs are thinner than the micro-SIM cards in earlier iPhone models, so a new card is called for.

Just yesterday we looked at some app analytics that suggested the iPhone 5 already represented 0.1 percent of the smartphones spotted online in China.

A company in Japan is offering a clever mobile map alternative that combines a conventional map display with an augmented reality view in a split-screen presentation. It’s called AR-Maps, and is now available in English thanks to a recent upgrade.

The folks over at Diginfo news have a good video demonstration of the application (see below), showing the various modes available. If you input your destination, you can use the AR view to see your destination overlaid on a live camera view. If you happen to be lost, you can also send your current location to your friends, as a sort of mobile SOS for them to help you out. The app also lets you search for nearby points of interests, like cafes or restaurants.

The company behind the app, Crossfader, has very diplomatically allowed users to switch between Apple’s own maps solution and Google Maps for the map display.

The app has been doing respectably well in Apple’s Japanese app store since its initial launch this summer and briefly held the tap spot in the navigation category in August. A mid-October upgrade to version 1.3 has given it a resurgence that saw it return to number one for a day last month.

The latest version improves battery consumption, added English support, and also has a mode for when your iPhone is sitting in a fixed position, like if it’s mounted on a car dashboard.

Check out the video demo below, for visual explanation of exactly how it works. If you’d like to try it out, you can download it here.

According to the release, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun believes that as the smartphone replaces the PC for many applications, the television is poised to become the most important end-user client in one’s home, provided it’s connected to the internet. The Xiaomi TV, then, is the first step in that direction; a way of bringing the internet’s video content to the TV.

The new device also represents an interesting challenge for Apple. Xiaomi now offers a device similar to the Apple TV for less money, with far more localized content, and it even supports input from all of Apple’s mobile devices. If Apple ever gets its Apple TV together and starts really pushing it, the company may find that Xiaomi is already eating its lunch in China, having already attracted Apple fans to Xiaomi’s TV platform.

Of course, we may not really be able to see Xiaomi’s reasons for launching the set-top box yet. The company is promising frequent updates and it will release an APK to third-party developers, meaning that what the device is capable of now could be very different from what it is capable of one year from now.

iPhone 5 for sale on taobao.com

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone 5 has yet to officially launch in China, but that hasn’t kept it from grabbing what could be as much as 0.1 percent of the smartphone market as of September, says China-based mobile metrics company Umeng [1]. The iPhone 5 is expected to launch in the country before year’s end.

That figure is likely much higher by now, and the company points out that most of these early adopters live in the richer regions of Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Beijing. This interesting phenomenon also occurred with the iPhone 4S prior to its launch, says Umeng.

Overall, Apple still reigns supreme in smartphone market share according to Umeng’s metrics, with about a 33 percent share in the third quarter, although that’s down from 38 percent in the second quarter.

Umeng’s report is an interesting read, not just for Apple watchers, but for Android as well, as it gives an interesting breakdown of the most popular brands in the country, where hometown favorite Lenovo makes a surprise appearance, just behind leader Samsung and second place HTC.

You can check out the report in its entirely below, or over on Slideshare.

Dragon Collection, Tokyo Game Show 2012

Konami (NYSE:KNM) is announcing today that its popular Dragon Collection game is now available in North America for iOS on the GREE (TYO:3632) platform.

Technically speaking, the game has been available in Canada since August as our friend Serkan Toto pointed out when it launched on the Canadian app store. In Canada, the game’s performance has been modest to date, briefly breaching the top ten rankings in the ‘card’ and ‘strategy’ categories. But Konami and GREE have now launched it for the US market as well, and it remains to be seen how it will fare there.

Dragon Collection is one of the biggest and most successful card battle games in Japan, with more than 7 million users in that country alone.

The announcement says that there will be new monsters designed for this English version of the game, but the core gameplay will be the same as the original.

If you’d like to give it a try, you can get it now in the App Store. An Android version is said to be coming later this year.

Writing on an iPad can be very tricky, given the smaller screen size. If I must write on an iPad, I usually resort to the wonderful Writing Kit app along with some Text Expander Touch / Markdown-fu as a way to take care of text formatting. But for some people, a simpler solution might be the answer. And the new Davinci note app is indeed very simple, and also very beautiful.

A product of Nota Inc., the app contains 16 slick design templates which you can choose from. All you have to do is write in your title and body text. From there you can add one or multiple photos, and you can also select different layouts to make sure they look nice.

I gave the application a spin and I confess I’m pretty impressed with the results. Once you have created your pages, you have the ability to share to Facebook or Twitter, or you can share to the web. Your page will then be hosted on davin.ci, and you can share your link or flick through all your journal entries. Here are a couple of pages I whipped up quickly as a preview.

From what I can see, in its current form it doesn’t really resemble a blog — but then again, it doesn’t really have to. For anyone who wants to publish and share beautiful pages, the Davinci Note app works well. Currently the app is free, and so is the page hosting. Although I’m told that there are plans to introduce advanced paid features later on. I’d personally like to see some sort of timeline capability, and perhaps a data export function so you can get your info out if you ever opt for another platform.

Nota Inc was founded in 2007, and is based in Kyoto but also has an office in the US.

Here’s an app from Japan that is totally ridiculous, and probably not worth paying for — but I can’t help but share it anyway.

Ningen Inc’s ‘Watching Cute Girl’ iOS app has a number of different and equally bizarre features. Essentially, it’s just an on-screen girl who watches over you, occasionally reacting to various inputs like sound or movement. There are 180 pre-recorded video patterns that can be played back, depending on the situation or settings. All those behaviors have resulted in a pretty bloated app though, as it’s a 314 MB download.

Actor Kendo Kobayashi supposedly has some input in how this app was developed, and there’s actually a mode that when switched on will address you as Mr. Kobayashi. So if your surname actually is Kobayashi, perhaps you might want to buy this app.

It’s currently on sale for the promotional price of 85 yen (or $0.99), and I’m not even sure it would be worth it at that price. I’m half-tempted though, just to make the home office a little more interesting.

Check it out over at watching.jp, where you can preview many of the different ‘watching girl’ behaviors.